MEANWHILE DURING THE LOCKDOWN - A WALK TO REMEMBER
The series of works Meanwhile During the Lockdown - A Walk to Remember (originally set of 26 works) are inspired by my stay in Vienna (Nov2020- March2021) and experiencing the whole winter season, experiencing first time the snowfall and overwhelmed by its magic that how it transforms a familiar landscapes into unfamiliar/forbidden/magical wonderland and also slow down the pace of the world and certain wrapped up silence to fall.
At one end we were facing pandemic and lockdown situations everywhere, deaths and depressive moments all around. I was unable to see the future where we will be standing next. Thus, going through the feeling of absence and emptiness, This snowfall and the vastly snow covered areas brought a sense of vision in me about life, our deep future, its politics and struggle that Nothing which we could take for granted. It's like our past or the day to day reality of the world around us is wrapped under a soft thick light blanket of snow which seems so beautiful and fascinating from far but a warmth of the sun can melt it and reveal it. As this pandemic has not only revealed the certain realities of our personal and political support structures and its functions but also enabled us to contemplate. On one hand we talk about technological revolutions, discoveries and so on and so forth but how we struggled in this pandemic had created a question mark for a while on all the achievements we have.
The protagonist here is trying to bring the struggle and balance about his own world, putting his own vision of the world around with a sense of alienation and emptiness while living and finding a connection between the two world “Fascination” (Experiencing the snow and its magic for the very first time) and the “Overwhelmed Situations” (Due to the pandemic, where people are losing lives, relationships, jobs, seeking the support from the governments, struggling for mental and physical support systems) by putting references side by side from the pandemic situations, our struggles for survival with the baggage of the past, my shift to other unfamiliar land for a while, unsettlement of the ideologies and the conflicts around I tried to bring in focus the Ironies and questions of daily life and the Idea of adaptiveness with the system in which we live. I have not tried to create something very spectacular through this series about the subject matters, the subject matter is all around us and the situation that many of us have found ourselves in.
