From Lost Roots to Urban Meadows 2019, Essay by Andrea Fam

Catalogue Essay for "From Lost Roots to Urban Meadows" a two person show with Madhvi Subramanian at The Private Museum, Singapore

Between and Beyond Screen and Window: Mapping the Shapeshifting.

by Andrea Fam

How does a city grow?

A city bears witness to development on a daily basis. As I put these words to paper, I can hear

the whir of a chainsaw put to task on manicuring the trees located within and along Singapore’s

public housing estates. In the pauses in branch pruning, the wind carries the sound of drilling

from a distant construction site. This medley of noises is a sonic indicator of the city’s attempts

at advancement. But how does a city grow?

An urban sprawl comes to mind when envisaging a growing city. And as it slowly but surely

spreads, it overruns a natural landscape that once existed. But where, from an aerial view, we

imagine the universal grey that comes with the assembly of roads and buildings, what is not

detected is nature’s cohabitation with its colonisers and attempts at reclaiming its lost terrain.

The concept of a growing city is reflected on and explored in the works by Nandita Mukand and

Madhvi Subrahmanian in their duo show, “From Lost Roots to Urban Meadows”, that ponders

humans’ complex relationship with nature. The intertwine between built surrounds and natural

environment are central concerns in the practices of the two artists: both share a view of

nature’s unwavering resilience in the face of mans’ unruly and oft unchecked expansionist

tendencies, whilst also recognising the beauty of nature's reflection in the man-made.

A sense of growth is detectable when you first encounter the works in the show. They extend

across the gallery and dot its walls with determined purpose, some suspend and hover above

the ground in anticipation and latency. More than just a sense of growth, this exhibition creates

an impression that it is growing, and indeed the matter which the works are created of and the

manner in which they are displayed creates an illusion that the works are coalescing and

morphing.

A viewfinder, a lens and a light source

The visitor is invited into a space that eminantes a sense of earthiness; clay, natural fibres and

other organic materials lend the exhibition its raw quality. Whilst seemingly instructive in their

presence and positions, with sets of ceramic sculptures weaving towards, through, around and

away from cypress seed pods and rhizoidal growths, what lays effectively camouflaged within

these composites is an allegorical approach to navigating the exhibition. The titling of the works:

‘Urban Veil’, ‘Empty Vessels’, ‘Entropic Orders’, ‘City Weave’, ‘Floor Plan’, ‘Forest of Shadows’,

etc., are indicative of the way in which each artist ‘sees’ and ‘moves through’ the world around

them and ‘sees’ and ‘moves through’ the world they have deployed in the gallery space: they

employ framing devices that limit vision, simultaneously enclose and exclude a line of sight,

create demarcations, or else fade in and out of reach.

A sense of invitation is experienced as you enter the doors of the gallery. Lying in a state of

repose is Mukand’s ‘Empty Vessels’, an installation of hundreds of cypress seeds distributed

across several bulbous groupings resembling hives of bees that suspend from the ceiling or lay

languidly on the ground. The seeds that were sourced from Spain, where the artist spent time

on a residency, bears significance: “the cypress tree grows very tall, and allows people to

imagine it connects earth to the sky. [They say] in Spain the Cypress trees are grown in

graveyards as a way to link the dead to heaven” recalled the artist in her studio where we

discussed the work. In explaining the work’s title, she reflected: “what’s fascinating to me was

how small, tiny and insignificant [they were], and maybe nothing would come off them, but at the

same time each seed is a vessel that has the potential to become a very tall tree that bears

more seeds, and more seeds might make a forest”.

Trees that grow in presence punctuate the wall beyond ‘Empty Vessels’. ‘Forest of Shadows’ by

Subrahmanian is a work that seems to gain in size before your eyes. Comprised of stoneware,

light and shadows, the work tessellates in two directions: horizontally and vertically. Softly

outlined trees appear to rise upwards whilst solid dashes seem to mark the length of the wall.

Only when sidled up against it do you recognise the work of light passing through the

stoneware, casting a stencil of these trees against the surface of the wall, like sentinels keeping

watch. Subrahmanian further illustrates: “You will see the shadows of the trees, but you don’t

see the objects, or the objects become the shadows, and the shadows become the objects. I

like that inversion that happens, and also that something is not tangible – you can’t quite hold on

to a shadow, it escapes you. You can’t claim it.”

“There is no definition to an object without shadow – it gives shape, lends

character and sets a mood. Through its transformative ability it can give a

static object movement–exaggerating and distorting it as it lengthens and

shortens with light. The spacious pattern of shadows, be it on the forest

floor or the deep recesses of an architectural space, displays the

unparalleled and the ethereal beauty of filtered light.”.

The attempt to wield light continues in an alcove off the main gallery in the works, ‘Reclaiming

the Road’, and ‘Connect/Disconnect’. ‘Reclaiming the Road’ can be metaphorically described as

a duet between a road and the trees that line it. This scene of tall trees casting their long

shadows across a road, was photographically recorded in the neighbourhood where the artist

lives but at the same time could be any road and any bank of trees anywhere in the world. The

work is often read as the pulse of a heart, with its cardiac rate and frequency charted on a

graph. It would be closer to describe it as a seismograph as the image captures the road’s

expansion over time and temperature. ‘Reclaiming the Road’ is an observation of the daily ebb

and flow of the tide of these trees’ shadows.

In ‘Connect/Disconnect’, window-like structures double up as grids on a map and lines mimic

pipeways that crisscross cities and divide land whilst connecting humans to each other.

“Windows are important for me because they are an avenue in and out of architectural spaces

to the world outside – an access point” comments Subrahmanian. “These clustered windows

are an avenue for sight and perspective and allow us to consider how perspectives shift: are we

looking at a forest or is it a mirage?”, speculates the artist. As the light source trails the linework

of ‘Connect/Disconnect’, an image of an electrical circuit starts to take shape. Subrahmanian

again: “I see the linkages as connections within the city. They are pipes and sewerages and

electrical wiring all rooting the city.”

We remain in the vein of mapping with ‘Floor Plan’ which Subrahmanian describes as a “cross

between an architectural floor plan, an abandoned city and archeological ruins.” Positioned as

though floating off the ground, the work responds to the cracks and crevices of the gallery floor,

imagining a city that expanded by circumventing rivers and ravines. Meant to be viewed from

top down, ‘Floor Plan’ considers the practice of cartography and the kind of information that can

be discerned from the data laid out by the study of maps. I am reminded again of an urban

sprawl where meandering lines that traverse a landscape are likely man-made.

“I am interested in architecture and the spaces between. [...] like Agnes Martin, Joseph Albers

and Mondrian, I see the city through grids and geometric shapes” explained Subrahmanian as I

studied her series ‘City Weave’ for the first time at her studio. Embedded within each ceramic

convex disc is a framework of lines that configure and reconfigure to form different impressions

of city networks, depending on how the discs are oriented. Oriented one way, they appear to

resemble tall buildings with numerous windows on each floor. Oriented another, the same

composition now takes on the appearance of a train going by a window, or conversely a city

being seen through the window of a moving train. Aside from grids and geometric shapes,

Subrahmanian also sees the city in the weaves of cloth: “I come from India where patterns are

commonly found on cloth” she reflected. Here the impression of the city through a framed

window immediately becomes populated with people. The same imagery can be seen in her

latest development ‘Urban Fabric’. Though similar in form in that it also comprises ceramic

discs, ‘Urban Fabric’ combines the appearance of a woven city. Distinct in this series is how the

discs line up to make the city skyline, or viewed another way, the edge of a fraying tapestry.

Cloth is also activated as a viewing technique by Mukand in her series, Empty Cocoon and

Urban Veil. In Empty Cocoon I, II and III Mukand has fashioned her wire and mesh fabric to take

on the form of cocoon casings. “A lot of [my] works are about processes of creation [...] how

things are created, grow and die. I see that in very difficult and harsh climates and conditions

plants always grow very gracefully, and they adapt as they grow. And as they do so, they take

on very graceful form[s]. Neuroplasticity tells us that the human brain can also adapt and

change and develop new skills”, stated the artist as she described the mirroring of plants and

humans in their abilities to adapt in the face of change.

By way of interpreting, Urban Veil, Mukand opened by describing her sense that “there is

always a barrier between us and nature”. Urban Veil is a group of 16 wall-bound sculptures

made predominantly of of cloth, paper, plaster, acrylic paint, resin and wire. Taken individually,

each Veil bears its own gestural, almost performative imprint. Some curve and curl, others

dangle, yet others fold over on themselves in a fashion not dissimilar to autumnal leaves. As a

collective, Urban Veil bears the impactful presence of a legion on guard, creating a striking

counterpoint to Subrahmanian’s ‘Forest of Shadows’ in the adjacent room. Shadow play

similarly occurs in this work; "The shadows emphasise the screen like quality of the work. It is a

way of emphasising the Urban Veil. The Urban Veil to me is our growing inability to directly

experience and take in the natural world. Living in the city we often view nature only through a

variety of screens – computer screens, phone screens, car windows, camera lenses. This in

turn obstructs our ability to absorb the clarity, the wisdom, the strength that is available from the

natural world" shared Mukand.

The idea of a barrier between human and nature is further explored in Mukand’s photographic

series. Produced in collaboration with performance artist, Mar Serinya, whilst Mukand was in

Spain on an artist residency, the series looks at human’s interaction with and distance from

nature. Four photographs, Together Forever, The Unborn, Fragility I and Fragility II, capture

Serinya in a range of poses that feature the artist in embrace with plants native to Spain on their

early stage of decline. The postures assumed by Serinya delicately balance an affection for

these plants with an employment of them as a shield. The series thinks about skin and bark as

protective surfaces between human and plant, but also about plant and nature as a protective

layer for humans.

Humans and nature vs human nature

One of the last pieces to be included in the exhibition was, Entropic Orders I by Mukand. It is a

sculptural piece that in part drapes down a wall whilst also accumulating on the ground below.

The medium of the work is paper whose multifaceted form has been molded by the shape of the

artist’s finger. Born in white and comprising hundreds of thimble-shaped units, Entropic Orders I

resembles bleached corals or petals made of egg shells. “‘Entropic’ refers to chaos, decay,

degradation. As per physics ‘entropy’ never stops. I am interested in the chaos in nature and

also within that chaos there is order and grace and therefore contradiction. Repetition and the

time involved [in making the work] made me think about how time is experienced in nature and

in the city. In nature it is cyclical, repeating, but we humans often experience time as linear

(progress, goals, etc.), but I think if we take a long enough view, human projects are often

cyclical even as they lay the ground for [a] next generation of projects. As per some doctrines

even our lives are cyclical with the idea of rebirth” interpreted Mukand of the work.

In reflecting on this show and its works, on humans and nature, and on humans’ struggle to

make sense of the world from the point of consciousness and perception, I find myself

pondering over a number of existential questions: Can humans ever fully embrace nature? Is

nature ‘embraceable’? How can humans translate the experience of the effects of nature?

‘From Lost Roots to Urban Meadows’ is an exhibition that contemplates human’s existence from

the point of their encounter with and presentation and representation of their natural and built

environments.

__________

Andrea Fam bio – updated 18 March 2019

Andrea Fam is an Assistant Curator at the Singapore Art Museum where she oversees the

Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam portfolios. She holds a B.A. (Hons) degree in Criticism,

Communication and Curation in Art and Design from Central Saint Martins, London, UK. She is

one of six curators in the upcoming Singapore Biennale 2019, ‘Every Step in the Right

Direction’, and co-curated the 2016 Singapore Biennale, ‘An Atlas of Mirrors’. She has also

curated and co-curated several exhibitions at SAM, namely, the President’s Young Talents

2018, ‘Imaginarium: Over the Ocean, Under the Sea’, and ‘Odyssey: Navigating Nameless

Seas’. Her research interests include investigations into the implications and impact of borders

in and on contemporary art production, the role of humour in society..

1 The words ‘grow’ and ‘develop’ are often used interchangeably: both consider the concept of scale and suggest an

increase in size. But where ‘develop’ contains notions of advancement, be it in progress, knowledge or skill to

improve something, ‘grow’ need not lend itself to being a descriptor of improvement and in this instance has been be

borrowed to express an observation.

2 Subrahmanian, Madhvi. “In Praise of Shadow”. Art Hoop Magazine, July 2018.