Selected to exhibit as a part of enter2012. Thank you Watermans and Irini Papadimitriou for this opportunity. For everyone in London, do drop by.
http://www.watermans.org.uk/exhibitions/exhibitions/enter12.aspx
Exhibitions | enter12
Mon 22 October 2012 - Fri 4 January 2013
Deshna Mehta
Khalid Rafique
Samia Rajar
Owl and the Abacus
Akriti Devi
Khalid Rafique
Samia Rajar
Owl and the Abacus
Akriti Devi
enter12 is Watermans’ annual exhibition of the year’s finest work by South Asian Digital Art and Design Graduates.
Hosted by Watermans New Media Gallery, enter provides a platform to showcase the emerging talent in the field of digital art, design and media production. This year’s exhibition includes work that involves innovative processes and diverse material ranging from design, interactive installation, film, graphic and communication design.
The exhibiting artists have been handpicked from some of the country’s leading Institutes that offer unique opportunities in exploring digital art, design and innovative technologies. The selected artists take different approaches to the use of technologies in their practice in order to articulate their responses to contemporary issues in an innovative manner.
Hosted by Watermans New Media Gallery, enter provides a platform to showcase the emerging talent in the field of digital art, design and media production. This year’s exhibition includes work that involves innovative processes and diverse material ranging from design, interactive installation, film, graphic and communication design.
The exhibiting artists have been handpicked from some of the country’s leading Institutes that offer unique opportunities in exploring digital art, design and innovative technologies. The selected artists take different approaches to the use of technologies in their practice in order to articulate their responses to contemporary issues in an innovative manner.
Selected artists
Deshna Mehta - MA Visual Communication, Royal College of Art
MA Graphic Design, London College of Communication
MA Graphic Design, London College of Communication
A CONSCIOUS CONTRADICTION
Passive traces of an ‘act’ive performance
If you think of acting spontaneously, it is no longer spontaneous because you are conscious of it. The only awareness of spontaneity comes from thinking about it as having happened in the past. The minute you reflect on the act of being spontaneous, you go back into the past and lose out on the present. In a spontaneous act, is it the death of the observer? Without an observer is there any observation? The nuances of these complexities surface in my (conscious) practice seeking for an answer, more often than not, only culminating into several questions. This pursuit led to the exploration of quantum physics and eastern mysticism expressed metaphorically through a performative installation.
What quantum mechanics says is that nothing is real and that we cannot say anything about what things are doing when we are not looking at them. Nothing is real unless it is observed …. and we have to accept that the very act of observing a thing changes it.- John Gribbon
Those who speak do not know, those who know do not speak.- Lao Tzu
What you will witness here is only a document, a re-enactment and a few traces extracted from the interaction with a performative installation which expresses that something’s cannot be documented or the act of documenting changes what ‘is’ being documented, therefore it ceases to be what it ‘is’. This installation is a ‘conscious’ attempt to ‘experientially’ bring forth the beauty and power of spontaneity(a moment that stems out of the sub-conscious/unconscious) embedded in the phenomenon of direct experience. For the very fact that it is a conscious attempt, it takes away from the act of ‘being’ or being spontaneous.
Therefore, a conscious contradiction.
Deshna is a graphic designer and a visual artist with a passion for photography. She holds a BFA from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art (Mumbai, India). Starting her career in India, Deshna moved to London in 2008 to pursue a masters in Graphic Design at London College of Communication. After having obtained her MA, short work stints and several freelance projects characterised her design journey in London and Mumbai. Her trajectory began with typography at the undergraduate level following on to exploring photography, printmaking, publishing design, design writing and research at the masters in LCC. She then felt compelled to find a strong voice to express what she stood for and believed in; which led her to pursue a second master’s in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art in London. Since then, her approach to design has been very holistic and content-driven, where the solution to a project can perhaps be found in a book, a film, an installation or a piece of writing. This opened several doors allowing her to explore drawing, installation art and curation alongside her graphic design practice.
After a fulfilling four year learning (coupled with working) odyssey in London, Deshna has now moved back to Mumbai to pursue her research (that she began at the RCA and for which she was awarded a distinction) ; wanting to re-define graphic design in an Indian context in order to make it more relevant for the masses in India. She believes that writing a process-focussed history of graphic design practices in the country from the time it existed in its unnamed state would be the first step towards actualizing her ambitious vision.
She continues to earn a living by practicing graphic design and hopes to expand her artistic practice through her spontaneous drawings and conceptual installations rooted in Indian thought, philosophy and spirituality. She senses the magic of the ephemeral, the elusive, the intangible, the emotive, the experiential and the subtle; which is what she aspires to communicate to her audiences, very often leading to conscious contradictions in the attempts of bringing out these understated moments.
