CONCEPT NOTE FOR DAAG

I have collected seed pods for years now. I am not sure when it all began. It did begin as a simple musing. Safe to say, now it is a full-blown obsession. When I am outside, my eyes are constantly moving between the branches in the sky above and the earth below. I can’t help but seek out for them.

One can track the seasons by examining the flat halos around the trees on the ground.  The halos are all made up of dried and fallen things from the trees that pool around it, marking it's silhouette on to the earth. Each halo is different and unique to its tree, reflecting its constant changes.  I rummage through these fallen things to find the seed pods. Most of time I try to find the ones that are "whole", somewhat complete and unbroken. The irony! These empty shells are all broken, split and stretched open.  They are the skeletons of the plant world. The dead holding tales of the living within the fault lines, creases and folds. And it's these stories that hold my attention. "Daag", in Hindi means scar, is the theme to the first collection of made objects that capture these fading narratives.

Daag / Scars are visible, tangible echoes of many changes that the seed pod has undergone. The changes are expressed in the patterns of movement that repeat over a period of time in these seedpods and the space around it. This concept has been subdivided into: UNFURL and SPLIT. BURST. SCATTER

UNFURL examines the slow deliberate opening up of the pods that appeal to a " blooming". This can be seen in the radiating FOLDS and LAYERS of the pods. Time is fleeting and movement is sustained.

SPLIT. BURST. SCATTER capture the after effects of sudden and quick expulsion of the seeds. The seeds are light, they float, flutter and fly away. the seed pods are gnarled and twisted. The stains/scars in such seedpods are often STACKed, as the seeds once had been. Time is fleeting and movement is sudden.

The base ideas for the structure of the form are FOLD, LAYERS and STACK. Float, flutter, twist and fly became one textures, the feeling the object should invoke.

The next post is going to be on the process of making of the objects.