‘Hyphenated Lives’ advances poetic and provocative inquiries into ideas of unison and estrangement, of confluence and conflict. Several works in the exhibition point to politically partitioned countries which often have to share their natural resources, that are the root cause of contestation and conflict, and on occasions, even the very basis for the separation of the countries. One of the motifs as well as medium in the making of the works in the exhibition is the electrical cable. These conduits of contact that transmit ideas and information, bringing people together, become painstakingly woven entanglements that morph into barbed wires like barriers.
In other works, salt is used as a medium to explore the tenuous yet intrinsic relationship between the body and the oceans. The exhibition makes several layered inquires into ideas of independence and interdependence; directed at our individual conflicted selves and our relationship with others as neighbors or as nations, prodding us to think of the many bonds and borders that make our complex existence