Photoworks

Self Portrait, 2016, 144 x 84cm
©Vandana The Artist

Arrival Departure – rituals of self Series, 2013, 21 x 25cm
©Vandana The Artist
The photographic work captures the threshold moment of meeting — the point at which two people arrive at each other and have already begun to depart. It served as the ground piece for the live performance Spiritual Friendship, in which the artist stood over it while extending the handshake ritual beyond its social limit.

Gorgeous Ogre 1 – rituals of self Series, 2013, 42 x 29.7cm
©Vandana The Artist
The work presents the bridal body in full traditional Indian outfit with turmeric on the face and Henna on the hands — the ritual of marriage in its most attractive form. The horns worn alongside the bridal decoration are symbolic of the hidden destructive element within the attraction itself. The “ogre” holds both: the seduction of the ritual and what it conceals.

Gorgeous Ogre 2 – rituals of self Series, 2013, 118.9 x 84.1cm
©Vandana The Artist
A continuation of Gorgeous Ogre 1 at a larger scale, pressing the confrontation between the attraction of the marriage ritual and the destructive element the bridal decoration cannot fully conceal.

segregation De segregation 1 – rituals of self Series, 2013, 84.1 x 59.4cm
©Vandana The Artist
The work juxtaposes the bridal rituals of two cultures — the colour, jewellery, and Henna of Indian marriage tradition against the white of Western bridal custom — which in Indian culture is associated with widowhood, mourning, and the absence of decoration. By deconstructing the preset colour codes of each and mingling them, the work crosses a cultural boundary and reconstructs a new one.

segregation De segregation 2 – rituals of self Series, 2013, 84.1 x 59.4cm
©Vandana The Artist
A continuation of segregation De segregation 1, further exploring the crossing of cultural boundaries through the deconstruction of bridal ritual — what signifies celebration in one tradition signifies loss in another, and the work holds both meanings in a single image.

Thii Thinker – Silence Series, 2010, 84.1 x 57.4cm
©Vandana The Artist
Appropriating the posture of The Thinker in the context of silence — a female figure wrapped in white cotton bandage from top to toe, with a strange, deliberate but untamed compulsion imposed by her own Self in outer silence. The work depicts the human brain as an almost always non-silent zone at the mundane level.