The rituals of self series (2013) investigates the body’s automatic functions as unconscious rituals — acts we perform repeatedly, without awareness, through a programmed, ritualistic system of the brain. Primarily through performance video, alongside sculpture, photography, and live performance, the series isolates individual organs and their habitual operations — the eyes and their blinking, the tongue and its speech, the throat and its sound, the neck and its movement — and intensifies each function until the body’s authority over it breaks down and the shift of power between the body and the Self becomes visible. The works move across scales: from the physiology of a single organ, to the monotony of domestic routine, to the social ritual of greeting a stranger, to the cultural rituals of marriage and devotion. In each case, the investigation is the same — what surfaces when the body’s automatic authority is overpowered?
Artworks under the series
Vandana 
