The Shadows of Memories- The Reflections in between the Horizon of Interior and Exterior Self (2020 August- Ongoing) is a body of work which plays between the memories and material reality. This plane is the horizon where the mind and body meet. This project is the first part of a long form Thesis work for the MFA in Visual Studies program in Minneapolis College of Art and Design done throughout Fall 2020.

This project concentrates on making images that focus on cultural manifestations through various forms of regular geometric shapes and organic shapes residing side by side. I observed the gesture reflecting on the surfaces that manifest complex and abstract forms of self awareness/ consciousness, followed by the unnoticed light patterns that occur to the known familiar and intimate spaces. The shadows light up the questions about the characters and people living there. I’ve responded to these questions with solitude and silence that attracts me in the midst of chaotic exterior reality.

The melancholia of turning all these stories to memories right after the moment of making has drawn me to creating this project.

This Shadow Dance of memories and feelings is crafted with the concept of visioning rhythmic pattern of music, electronics, absurdism and disorientation/ dissonance of 7th Harmonic Progression (Since Stravinsky, Cage and Schoenberg’s 12 tone row Music and Atonality of Harmonization) evolution of Western Improvised Music and how notes play and form a meaning in the entire bar filled with chords one after another flowing to the next bar or movement. The margins of these images play a negative space in between and the crux of these project.

Though each note carries its history and the life of the musician, the entirety of the composition creates the story. Be it a question or a response or in between.

To create rhetoric in this photo documentary of gesture and relationship and to reflect the transcendental evolution of “I” from one state to another, I generated a conversation between trees and their habitats.

The images question how life evolves through different time and whether silence, quietness and melancholia affect the basic integrity and passion for existence. And how co-existence can still instill life and hope for goodness from isolation and melancholia deep inside.

The use of black and white images emphasize on abstraction and how highlight and shadow reflect the emotional journey of life from one point to the other within a frame.

Throughout 2019 to Early 2021 I had been photographing alleys and roads of surrounding places of Kolkata.

My intention was to relate and compare the rural walkways of places located on the transition of the city and countryside and abandoned walkways of the city park.

But the moments in between came out to be something beyond the initial interpretations.

The images relate to the concept of abandonment. The final couple of images inquire on our perception of memories and superimposition of an idea to other thoughts.

“Variations” focuses on the beautiful/ aesthetic of Chaos. The plants are rhetoric and have been used to evoke a complex network of Ideas running through organic bodies.

The irregular design constantly queries the geometric form of lines and proper mathematical interpretations of geometric shapes creating a third idea of plurality and society of odds and evens.