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SHIFTER2 : POST-MORTEM
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Sonia Jose, a Bangalore (India) based artist says “My photographs served as relics of the past to trigger the memories and re-live the experiences I was too overwhelmed at the actual time they happened to be a part of. What most aided to make sense of the experience however wasn’t that of being in that place or the latter reflection after I came back home, but the time it took between both to make sense of the experience. Just like how when one sends a post card; without the time it takes to travel, the communication would not be complete between sender and receiver.” Here Post/Mortem’ becomes the re-examination of past experience. A living experience is objectified through photography and then is reconfigured through recollection.
German born Christian Wulffen’s work, as Nikolai Forstbaur puts it, “ proves to be a constant estimation and measurement: of his own action, of the possiblities of artistic utterence, of the location, of the art system. It soon appears that the balance of presentation and analyses loses impact as the presentation itself takes on an analytical character.” Here the process of “Post/Mortem” becomes synchronous with the act of practice and presentation. There is a constant reconsideration present even within the immediacy of the photo.
Jason Yoh, a Cleveland (OH, USA) based artist too explores rememberance as a form of objectification. However the burning Cuyahoga River is a communal memory rather than a personal one. One that is immediately poignant as it brings up issues of industrial pollution and its resultant ecological crisis. A memory that is more easily forgotten than commemorated.
While Sreshta Premnath (Bangalore, India), in Site Seeing attempts to formally deconstruct the place of the postcard, its site constantly shifting one juxtaposed upon the other, Avinash Veeraraghavan (Bangalore, India) explores the blank, black, text-side of his card as both a distillation of the image and a reflective surface upon which every passing scene is reflected – a constant reflector of its shifting site.
H. L. Hix contributes two previously unpublished poems, both of which will be in his next book, Shadows of Houses, which will be published next year by Etruscan Press. “The Prophets” appropriates and manipulates a sentence from each of the biblical prophets, repeating them in a progression; “The Letters” does the same thing with the new testament letters. Since the original authors whose words get deformed in them are long dead, they seemed in some way suitable to the Post/Mortem theme.
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Jason Yoh grew up in rural Wayne County, located an hour and a half south of Cleveland, Ohio USA. He is a recent graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Art and currently lives and works in that same city. His artwork uses the western pictorial tradition of landscape as a metaphor for contemporary concerns involving security and freedom of the individual. Sonia Jose lives and works in Bangalore, India. She is focused on issues of cultural, social and geographic displacement, identity and memory. She is a graduate from Srishti school of Art Design and Technology (Dec 2003). |
Christian Wulffen has shown his work widely in such galleries as Michael Sturm and ACP in Stuttgart, Germany. His work has been included in several group and solo shows in Germany and Switzerland. He currently lives and works in Cleveland USA and Germany. Avinash Veeraraghavan lives and works in Bangalore, India. His work often deals with questions regarding the relationship between the observer and the observed often employing devices of opposition and impermanence. He is represented by GallerySKE where he has had two solo shows. |
Sreshta Premnath currently lives and works in Bangalore. His work explores issues of borders, circumscription and communication, and often takes the form of site-specific installations. He is currently the editor of Shifter magazine and can be reached at sreshta@circumscript.net, or editor@shifter-magazine.com. H. L. Hix has published several books of poetry, including City of Ash, Perfect Hell and Rational numbers. Among numerous literary awards he was also awarded the T. S. Eliot prize. He lives and works in Cleveland (USA). |
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