If the Seas Catch Fire

Experimenter presents If the Seas Catch Fire, Sakshi Gupta’s debut solo in Mumbai. Gupta’s practice centres the disconnect one experiences with oneself and the turmoil this creates, bringing to the fore the constant drone of an acute background suffering. The works in this exhibition, all ambitious sculptur es made from reclaimed industrial metal, rummaged concrete and stoneware, emerge from experiencing incessant cycles of numerous beginnings and ends occurring simultaneously, which fosters a desire to see beyond the literal.

The difficulty in making sense of the human condition is translated visually through varied analogies; a chaotic, suffocating headspace is likened to a large-scale chicken coop, whilst an overwhelmed state of mind takes the shape of a ruffled carpet. The crosses between banal inanimate objects and animal-human-plant lives seen in the works arise from a desperate need to blur these rigid confines and experience the self in a larger context, outside of these demarcations. Absolute wreckage and beauty are often juxtaposed, and life is experienced in its splendour, dread and the interstices in-between. One notices a pattern of waves of certainty and passion crashing onto the shore of assuredness and receding back into nothingness. Grappling with an existential struggle can seem irrat ional, grotesque, pathetic and simultaneously seductive, poetic and even comical – all at once. Amidst this, a search for peace and reconciliation ensue, closely followed by the realisation of the desperate need for the love that is central to our being, o ur existence, the one that is lost between the layers of truth and untruth.

Words Platform Desk
Date 22.09.2023