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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

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Felix Frachon is delighted to present an exhibtion of Apnavi Thacker:

Travails of the Wandering MemorySeed

The MemorySeed, a fictional pod, contains a selection of works spanning three series: Drawing Breath (2012), Hiraeth (2014) and Ecologies of Absence (2016).

The different domains of botany, ecology, memory and the Anthropocene overlap with each other to build layers, forming micro and macro views that are both nebulous and acerbic mirroring the functions of human memory.

Drawing Breath LXVI and LXVII, intimate sculptures rise from reverse anthropomorphism to become cohesive ‘ultraforms’, becoming progressively dark reflections of adaptive invasive nature.
In contrast, the delicate drawings and collages drawn from the Hiraeth (2014) series, tackle Swiss national identity with collages drawn upon maps of territory indicating political borders taken over by non-native species- suggesting open and closed borders and their ensuing trade-offs.The three drawings in this series, in contrast, explore the technological vis a vis the organic-suggesting the economic conditions of migrant labor.

Currencies of Absence (2016), a site – specific installation, is framed through explorations carried out at the Bombay Port Trust garden in Colaba, Mumbai and around the artist’s home in Geneva, Switzerland; unfolding into a complex work formed over time and distance. Here in its second iteration, the installation retains its foundation suggesting the commodification of nature while drawing upon history to reflect colonial trade routes using objects that simultaneously reflect memory through form. Currencies of Absence questions the human considerations of nature while bringing to the fore the lives of the flora and fauna within the space; emphasizing life, death, the marginalized, the unnoticed and the forgotten, the visible and the hidden

Lastly, a provocative piece of visual symphony, the video Cadavre Exquis is named after a surrealist parlor game, where participants create drawings and collages collaboratively, passing on the drawing for the next participant to complete. A game that required the act of secrecy, where the next participant could not see the previous drawing, worked as an intention to unearth and free the unconscious.
Much like the game, Cadavre Exquis unearths the surrealistic elements of a large scale fish market in the heart of Mumbai, at Sassoon Docks; indicting the aestheticization of the ‘dead things in the water’ (or formaldehyde, as the case may be) as an object without a purpose. The inclusion of labor that cleans, strips, skins and sorts these fish, underlines labor and its conditions, and places consumption’s mute victims in a mellowed palette no less difficult than its reality.

Apnavi Thacker – Mumbai 2016

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 SELECTED WORKS

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