In the rapidly homogenizing Indian metropolis, one of the world's most densely populated and culturally diverse countries, my artistic inquiry examines how the place responds to the becoming of a non-place.I explore specific sensory experiences through "thinkfeeling," a resonance, to develop interpretations of affect that engage with the temporality of artistic responses and uncertainties that arise on-site.The methodological framework of this work is embedded in an everyday practice of drawing from observation under an underpass in a developing suburb in an urban Indian city. The phenomena of rapid constructions, infrastructural development and making of demarcated passages tends to make rigid boundaries between the past and the present, the marginalised and the privileged, the natural and the man-made. However, this rigidity is constantly challenged by the way these structures are affected by life that occurs around and inside them. My practice of observation with drawing, takes me to experience resonance as a response to this sense of alteration in place and in myself as a part of this landscape. The response begins with sight and continues to work with sounds, smells and tactility of the place. A vulnerability in remaining fluid and in-between, makes me pause at and respond to occurrences of place- soil, human interactions and nature, in the larger narrative of concrete structures and rigid demarcations, seeking a place of place in a becoming of a space. The drawing tools embody functions of masonry tools that are part of a landscape under construction. This interchangeability within the space of visuality affects how I record and observe these experiments as a play in temporality, in resonance with the changing place.
Junuka Deshpande
Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology
Junuka's interest is rooted in observation, as an artist and an educator, which informs her artistic sense-making through drawing, sound, and material play. With a background in documentary filmmaking, she critiques the implicit assumptions of selfhood and hierarchy in representational practices. Her current practice explores the affective and vulnerable dimensions of both external and internal worlds. Junuka teaches at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India.