Desire, Civilization, Birth

Rendition of Two Installation performance of Ratnabali Kant

5th and 6th May 2023

Curated by Smitha Cariappa
Organized by Ratnabali Kant Foundation

This performance is a retake of Ratna Bali Kant's live performance titled- 'Death of Desire' I observed her performance video and let my thought flow on how I connect to desires and how to visualize desires of self. I had to give a gap and let the natural idea flow. After two days, I got some vision in a flash and wanted to follow it to see in complete clarity. The concept of performance evolved and developed organically. When I thought to work on my idea, I hit on the doors of Vison of Flash. The color of my desire was vigorous and heavy and gradually started giving a form and then fixed the shade of dark pink. The next step was to work on my sculptural installation.

I sought the material right to make my sculpture heavy and bold. Acquiring the apt material took three days, then building it took two days. As I was working on the sculpture and developing my installation for performance, various thoughts flowed into my mind about desires. Desires don't have boundaries and can grow wide and tall are unlimited. The acquiring, consuming, un-bounding, overwhelming emotions turning to greed gradually elements started showing their face, and images from my childlike desires to play with kitchen toys appeared.

I played with my desires with deep breaths hinting at my existential self. Desire in humans can have several layers and metaphoric meanings and connotations mixed with negative shade hiding under the bright. There are several aspects of life desires- to have a good partner, love life, luxuries, hunger for power, the satisfying demands of the ego, and many socially set materialistic things there is no limit. All these wishes and unlimited desires are summed up metaphorically with pink cotton candy.

The eating and consuming cotton candy did not want to finish it wanted to enjoy every bit of it. Metaphorically the desire was in the form of a balloon presented to audiences. The audience blew the balloon with their 'desires then I offered the cotton candy to the audience to devour it.

The Cotton Candy metaphorically represented greed and ballon to desires. I saw many avoid eating it. The journey ended by playing with a balloon loaded with black ink. The climax was to play with death in due course, and then there was an end to this desire. There are various aspects in my work- existential self, the heavy proud body carrying the heavily wrapped pieces of baggage of desires that are visually appealing bold, and attractive. Polyphonic sounds filled the extempo of action representing the presence of self all the time. At last, I released my childlike emotions and playfully braking the ego of desire.