Gallery of Shadow
What inspired you to use so many different materials?
This project covers an art institution which I studied at for a large part of my childhood. The institution housed several artists ranging from beginners to intermediate to mastery, and I would gaze into studio spaces through little windows with wonder and confusion at the materials and techniques they were using, hoping one day I would be on the other side of the window working on the same complex systems. That time never came, unfortunately — at least not in the way I hoped it would be realized. I used this project as a way to mature my own practice and use unconventional mediums that I would often see at the studios.Gallery of Shadow speaks about how this institution was overcome by industrial desire. I referenced this desire by beginning with a sheet of metal. The use of image transfer mimics my own memory, the purest form of which is the initial print out, vivid and sharp. In the process of transferring this image to the steel, rips and tears occur, and even large parts of the image are lost — signifying gaps in my memory, and my unreliability as a narrator.
What does this project mean to you?
I wanted this project to serve as a site of my own emotional processing.
What feeling does this artwork create in you?
Cold warmth. It makes me nostalgic for a time in my life where I was very optimistic in my art and what I do — however that time, that person, that space, those people do not exist anymore, simply by the way memories work. This project was my way of solidifying blurry memories: compressing the fog in my brain from an abstract state of matter into something as tangible as paint and steel and poetry.
Which poem resonates with you the most?
The second poem, Child of Shadow, resonates with me the most. It is a dialogue between my current self and my artist child. Between my skeptic and my inventor.
Questions by Grisha Obolenskiy, answers by Veer Manghnani
Gallery of Shadow is a 3 panel metal installation, suspended from the ceiling. The panels are identical in size and distance from each other and the floor. Each panel is characterized by a different image on one side, similar in style and color palette, but contain different subjects, abstractions, and hints of Arabic calligraphy.