rhizome

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Rhizome – Tracing Ecocultural Identities, curated by Jesal Thacker, presents site-specific ‘inscapes’ of fourteen contemporary artists as their individual responses to specific museum artefacts, iconography and aesthetics. As interventions spread across museum galleries and spaces, the site-specific ‘inscapes’ encourage ways to relook at the rhizomatic connections as well as the disparity and discord, rising due to the shifts in perception.

The selected artists are either weaving a fragmented history to develop ‘spectres of belonging’ or drawing ‘realms of convergence’ that remind us of the powers of healing. Immersing into the ‘irreversible tides’, questioning the ecocultural dimension of water. Assembling, composing and aligning become cathartic acts for artists, responding to the growing consumerist culture. Questioning the intensity, expanse and need of consumer goods, they present our delusional relationship through scale and material engagement. Rebuilding a relationship through a cartography of found objects, jesmonite, leaves, seeds, pebbles, fired brick, wood, glass, paper, found feathers all arranged in a manner reflecting the transiency of all material existence. Critiquing the utopian-capitalist world, artists present the dichotomy through its hyphenated forms and embroidered images on the casteist imbalance of ecological responsibility.

Politics of culture and identity woven into the poetics of ecology stimulates a viewer to rethink their bond with nature. Rhizome, an ongoing research, works towards the discovery of the ecological entwinement within culture, contemporary ethos and philosophical essence, which organically reflects in its cognitive patterns as a ‘continua’.