DHOLABIRA

My works portrays the narratives of my native land, woven against a nostalgic backdrop. My intention is to create an ideal homeland within a fictional framework which stands between the contrasts of reality and utopia. My works convey the reconciliation of childhood paracosms, which I started re-discovering when I had to deprive myself of my native land for study purposes. However, my works tend to go a step beyond and preserve the raw memories, concerning land, people, culture and their values. My journey begins from a small village of Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, far away from urban artificiality where still serenity sings, shifting of seasons is still the biggest festivals, and still paddy fields narrate the stories of wind! My works, therefore, portrays the village tales, creating a new diaspora between ‘myth and reality’ or ‘urban and rural’ identity, where vegetables or beehives themselves turn into the iconic representation of my native land. As I mentioned above, that my works possess a tendency to preserve memories, I want to install the same permanently, like a museum preserves culture, generations. My intention is to build a space, a house of memories, which will help to levitate the values or culture of my native land within a cubical space. My project basically intends to preserve the stories (culture, people, and land) of a rural society, the raw reality of my land, for posterity. Because, before the rapid growth of urban havoc or the crossroads of transformation destroy the rural aesthetic, before existential crisis hits the ground, as an artist, I want to preserve it in a singular frame. ‘dream’ of ‘Museumisation of Memories’.