The elephant in the room
Writing about the baby before the baby is born is uncharted territory that I take in this curatorial venture. But as a woman, an artist and a poet it is also not that strange a space that one occupies. Because from its inception to its birth, an idea or a word that comes to inspire you, has a magnetic pull of its own. Like a new born child it has an inbuilt oak-ness or a tiger-ness to it. It is always inviting you to participate in its blooming. More often than not the artist’s personality starts intervening in this sacred, delicate formation, ideologies and perceptions wrapping around this growing foetus, warping it.
It always takes two to tango, a Presence and an Absence.
The artists attempt here is to focus on the slippery space of the original seed. They’re trying to desist from interfering, only assisting and aiding the slow arrival of a living work of art, as a painting or a poem. Where every line, colour and shape comes from a loving, caring stroke. It is the birthing of a unique child, only because they have allowed it to be unique. As creators they want to dwell in those trance like twilight zones, where there is no Presence of Absence. Here, replacing the heavy and concocted web of the mind which creates the feeling of Absence and discontent in us, there exists instead an acute feeling of Presence. A space arrived at by unlearning and erasing. It escapes a definition. But they believe that once you taste this nectar of creation, the very process recreates you, as much as a work of art is created. As though born again, a homecoming.