Reflection on the New works shown at Collect

My art process always begins with a question. The process of making sometimes untangles the question to some degree or just helps me find peace with not really knowing the answer to every question. ‘In Lure of New Worlds’ is a series of abstract maps made in 2020. These are meditations in my material in the time of pause last year, when everything looked bleak. 2020 was an exceptional time. In the beginning there was a lot of anxiety however slowly when life settled into a new rhythm and I began to see positives in all the chaos. The recurring question for me was - are we going to go back to same world post pandemic? To the same pace of living? The forced pause and isolation brought all that we were avoiding in the fore - our everyday living choices, values, urgency of environmental concerns, divisive politics etc etc. Now as I reflect, I think I took this time to process everything through art making or process of creation - all the news of chaos outside as well as inside, into creating something that is 'hopeful'. I looked at the act of creation itself, where something needs to be destroyed to make space for the new creation. I took that thought into my process which was anyways always there, but I just got present to it. I shredded all my collected maps so far in my practice and printed them to make them into fine laces to make my thread, all by hand. I created a melange of threads of many countries and places lived, visited, imagined or sleepwalked and slow-stitched these threads onto a new sphere using very old linens, depicting abstract maps of Balance, Harmony & Co-existence. I then got them encased in a very delicate handmade walnut frame (made by the very talented Tom Trimmins), to be able to put these pieces out in the world as a token of hope… for a new worlds of balance, harmony & coexistence when we get through these times.