…the first musical instrument I remember touching was the tabla

*

This is a fragmented family tree. There are some motifs - the circle, the tabla, the record. A shape, a sound, a memory. There are some materials - the wood, the cloth, the skin, the hair, the fabric, the eye. These details make the work distinct from a simple tracing of lineage. These details make it about finding the musicality of memory and the rhythms of the past.

The chopped tree stump forms the syahi for these tabla’d images. The abyss at the heart of the drum. The symbol of dislocation becomes the central point of attention. There is always something hidden The work tries to reconnect an ancestral lineage severed by dislocation.

*

this pair of beating eyes, bringing life
the touch of taut skin
flitting
flatting
frequencies
skimming
skipping
sentences of sound
there is no more desperate path out

(of dislocation out)

than my divine desire to crop my fingers
fold them into pegs
to fling and to follow
to play play play