Excavating Dust

Sareena Khemka

Dust envelops and enters nooks and crannies, it fills space, conceals and obscures, and at the same time reveals what’s underneath. Besides serving as a sign of a destructive past and the remnants of the present, it also is a marker for the future as every animate and inanimate object begins and ends in dust. Not only is dust an indication of the passage of time but also, in itself, a gathering place. The transient quality of dust and its delicate play between unveiling and denuding lends itself to the archaeological nature of my current work that is rooted in this amalgamation of the past, the present, and the future.  

In my work, I have been using dust as a material to make many of my sculptures that combine organic and industrial materials. The shimmer of metal dust and mica, the luxurious sheen of copper and bronze powder, the grey desolateness of cement and the nostalgia of terracotta – all delicately balance miniature forms of the built and un-built, organic and inorganic environments depicting landscapes and objects left to disintegrate and decay. As ruins with the possibility of regeneration. My preoccupation with studying decay in my practice came with living in large urban metropolises particularly the city of Bombay, visiting dumping grounds where mounds of trash were left to decompose. When material decays over time, it starts to take on a shape of its own as it is broken and reduced to unrecognizable forms. Observing these decaying urban landscapes has led me to a language of organic drawing that spreads and immerses itself within all of my works through architectural forms of buildings and spaces.

Envisioned as a site-specific installation that can expand according to the given space, Fragmented Landscapes, reads as an aerial view of a map, and was conceived as the aftermath of a site that has been destroyed, akin to a natural disaster such as an earthquake or an old house that has been demolished. The physical act of breaking the housing terracotta tiles or shattering the cement created organic shapes that relied on chance, as one could not direct where the fault lines would form. Reassembling the pieces into this landscape that is laid out almost like a puzzle resembles a staged archaeological site that could have been fragments unearthed from dust just as in an archaeological dig.

Fragments 2 & 3 could be pieces of concrete extracted from a broken wall of a historical monument that was destroyed as a part of urbanization or taken down as an act of violence or erasure of memory. Having a fresco-like quality, in parts, they are indicative of a lost heritage, with impressions, marks, fissures, and air pockets embedded in the casting, to now only exist as artefacts to be displayed in the museum. My work delves into the regeneration of these ruins into contemporary relics; to not place them in the pathos of the nostalgia of lost time but rather create new objects and landscapes using them as markers for what remains.

Reimagining Remnants 1 & 2, made of papercrete, recycled cement, sand, and newspaper to create these objects shaped like bricks. These brick-like forms, which are a part of an ongoing series, are reminiscent of frescos and cave paintings with the markings and lines used to draw upon the surface gilded with copper leaf. Yet, they are made with industrial materials that belong to the present. These works that lie in a state of construction, deconstruction, and regeneration suggest they might be in a state of becoming both in their crumbling and their renewal.

The distinction of time, as fragments, remnants and particles combine to question whether these are ruins of the past, present, or the future. Are they in a process of decay or have they already reached their finite form? With time, objects change in appearance, as most objects do in their natural state. What remains is dust that is both finite and infinite at the same time; it can never end, only be moved from one place to another.

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