prajakta-potnis-capsule-series

PRAJAKTA POTNIS

Capsule Series

About the work:

For the last few months I have been attempting to transform the site of the freezer into a space that could resonate a corporeal site of a memory bank. I keep going back to a Boris Groys interview where he states  “memory functions as a freezer”. Is it possible then to actually sculpt or carve a physiological scape? By appropriating found film slides from the personal archives of an unknown tourist that I unearthed in a quaint market in Berlin in 2014, I am hoping to go back in time and freeze the various sites visited by this reluctant tourist, in a naive attempt to sojourn the sites from ageing.

By projecting these found landscapes onto the walls of the freezer, my endeavor was to open up the walled space to create a space within a space, and in some instances carve a window within this enclosed environment, a clear shift from my earlier photographic works where the site itself was a stationary proscenium. In the current series the enclosed capsuled site goes through various physiological metamorphoses due to the extreme temperatures sometimes manipulated, while at times naturally occurring.

To be under snow to be frozen is a kind of natural museification. As time gets delayed, a kind of frozen decay envelops this stationary yet volatile space. The title of the space is adopted from Tarkovsky’s cinematic masterpiece “Stalker” where the zone has been interpreted variously as a metaphor for the soul, the subconscious depths of the psyche, or the private inner realm divorced from outer social reality. In months to come there will be more transformations that will transpire within the zone, below are some of the most recent ones.

Artist CV

In 2019, Prajakta was invited to participate in “Imagined Documents” curated by Ravi Aggarwal for the Serendipity Art Festival Goa.In 2018 she participated in some significant exhibitions, Facing India: India from a female point of view at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg. A Tripoli Agreement” curated by Renan Laru-an at The Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah.  She won the Umrao Singh Shergil Grant for Photography 2016-17. In 2017 She was part of an iconic exhibition India Re- Worlded: Seventy Years of Investigating a Nation, Curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala. In 2016 she was invited to participate at the 11th Gwangju Biennale, curated by Maria Lind. In 2015 at the Queens museum, New York, her work was exhibited in a show titled After midnight: Indian Modernism to contemporary India, 1947/1997, curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala. 2014 she was invited at the Kochi -Muziris Biennale curated by Jitish Kalat. Her work was exhibited by Geeta Kapur in the show titled Aesthetic Bind- Cabinet Closet Wunderkammer at the Chemould Art Gallery, Mumbai. She was invite by Clark House Initiative, Mumbai at the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris.  In 2011 her works were part of the travelling exhibition titled Indian Highway IV, Mac Lyon Museum of contemporary art Lyon, France, Indian highway III the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2010) and Indian highway II the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Norway(2010). Her solo projects include:”A body without organs, Project88,Mumbai (2020) “when the wind blows”, Project 88, Mumbai(2016),  Kitchen Debate, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014), Time Lapse, The Guild art gallery Mumbai and Local Time, Experimenter, Kolkata (2012), Porous walls The Guild art gallery, Mumbai (2008), Membranes and Margins,Em gallery, South Korea (2008), Walls in between (2006) The Guild art gallery.