Context

The paintings and the various digital media works and installations I have been producing for the last three decades or so have a common thread, which is my interest in cosmological (cosmographical as well as cosmogonic) narratives.

This involvement with narratives that describe world-views started off as a result of my need ( soon after my art education) to find an alternative to curatorialy shaped and art-historically defined art. My search was for an art that is born out of pure existential necessity. This apparently naive but engaging quest led me eventually to Shamanistic ritual art practices and from there to contemporary art practices.

This interest in origins eventually developed into an involvement with traditional knowledge systems, archaic beliefs, mythologies and cosmologies or narratives that define world-views. And from there it was the logical next step to explore contemporary ideas about the world and how the resulting world-views engage with traditional, culturally inherited ideas of the world. Currently my work traces the overlap or collision between scientific/technological description of the world and the traditional/metaphysical descriptions of the world.

Speaking of the present I certainly hold the view that virtualization and relocation of our everyday social and economic transactions into virtual data space is the most important marker that identifies this present historic moment. Consequently the art I produce currently addresses the dematerialization or erosion of tactility of the real, and its effect on our being and existence.

Baiju Parthan

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