Engaging Buddha

Ink jet print on archival paper.

Dream missives

‘The Game’ originates in the artist’s delight in arranging objects to provoke spontaneous auguries. This procedure bears an affinity with the surrealist game of ‘The Exquisite Corpse’, in which collage-poems were developed through a sequence of unpredictable contributions by various hands. Indeed, Kashi’s procedures in ‘The Game’, with their reliance on the deep logic of dream and the deceptively random appearance of chance, have their origins in his continuing preoccupation with the principle of collage. At once lyrical and sinister, ‘The Game’ speaks of the astute gambits of spy-craft and of suits that fall into place by chance, of capricious dice that can change the fortunes of princes as in the Mahabharata, and of that greatest of games, the lila of the gods, from which, as we have noted, Indic myth suggests the world was born.

At its core, ‘The Game’ is a relay of missives to the self, articulating the gamble that is self-recognition: To probe deeply into our motives, devices and impulses is a necessary enterprise if we are ever to discern a pattern to our journey through the world; but what is to be done with all the hidden others that we may find within ourselves?

Excerpt from Ranjit Hoskote’s essay for the show catalogue.