Saruha Kilaru

These works presented as an on-site installation involve multiple processes of making, varying from digital to handmade. It started off as a simple 2 colour oil painting of A5 size, evolving into a 4 colour screen print of 100x120 cm in size.

Thinking around perception and light with its reflective quality, I went on to work slowly and meditatively over these screen prints with vinyl prints that were cut, first, into dots and then slowly pasted one by one, retracing the digitally enhanced texture of the canvas on the print, along with sewing sequins on a screen-printed translucent fabric.

I am interested in these contradictory and manipulated spaces that our perception is formed by. This is represented through the process of making (fastness of technology as opposed to the slowness of the handmade) along with the ways of displaying it.

a collection of approximately 500 tiny ripple like ceramic pieces of porcelain, each individually painted and glazed, were made over a period of almost a year.

Painted in 4 key colours and their shades, these ripples can be touched and moved around like puzzle pieces to form new images with the multiple shades and colours.

The viewers are invited to touch and move the ceramics into new images.

You might need a bit of comfort....

Just lean into me, like your little pillow or your plushy...

And touch me gently…..

Swipe me left and right…..

Breathe…..

Take your shoes off, spin the dial and play with me……

While you play,

How does it feel to swipe on me,

Draw patterns…………

Compare the coarseness of the sequins to the softness of the fabric……

 admire my shine and gloss……..

while you touch me?.......

the dots and dashes, layers of colour stains, a hidden order………

all overwhelmingly having a chaotic conversation.

These works are highly meditative to me where I am constantly retracing patterns and colours with even minute forms like the dots and dashes metaphoric of the phrase - ‘we think life is a line but if you look it up close, it’s just dots and dashes.’

There is order in chaos and chaos in order……..

Capturing moments spontaneously, from a yellow polaroid camera, over an elongated period of 18 months, this visual narrative backed with handwritten texts, is dedicated to colour yellow and my meditations over it.

For the past 18 months, I have been drawing, thinking, writing, photographing, and living through a yellow lens. It started off as a coping mechanism (I suppose), seeing yellow as a colour of positivity and a source of recovering from my blues. Eventually, I started perceiving Delhi, where I grew up, as a yellow city. Researching this perception, I found out interestingly, that the natural light in Delhi is in fact slightly yellow clad. Dwelling deeper, I started harnessing and exaggerating this sense of light through colour.

Moving to London, I missed the yellow lit city. However, I found a new fascination with all things yellow. In a new city and lonely covid hit environment,

 I kept myself engaged by hyper fixating on all things yellow,

 through art, literature, music and everything connected to yellow.

The more I healed, the more yellows in me started to dilute, giving way to shades and hues of greens, reds and blues and infinite colours in between.