Experiments with truth

Cast cotton rag pulp, photocopy transfer, ink, archival print, wooden stand. 9.5" x 18" x 12.5".

Artists are remembered as much by their work as the stories in circulation around them and a few memorable photos which somehow capture their personality or give a glimpse of their inner persona. It may be stories like Van Gogh cutting off his ear, or pictures of Picasso impersonating a bull fight, or Giacometti hurriedly walking like one of his own sculptures, or artists suffering from poverty in general. At some point these visual and verbal narratives become inseparable from the work and even colours the way we perceive the work. Of course, publishers, museums and media love such quirky stories of artists’ life. The deeper the suffering, the stranger the behaviour: the juicier the story. These stories are repeated adnauseum especially if the artist succeeds; nobody is interested in the sob stories of a 'failed artist'.

In these books I have created fictitious stories about myself. The photographs were taken at various points in the last ten years as pranks; to reiterate the idea that there were other possibilities for my life than what it is now.

These books bring to the fore the issue of fact and fiction mingling to create 'truthful' narratives about artists and its consumption by art history and media. Also, I have tried to peep into the psyche of 'artists' and how the 'structure' of the 'art world' controls an individual.

The fun part is, decades down the line, when I'm dead and gone, when fact and fiction gets blurred by time, (if somebody remembers me) how these books could be used by art historians to build narratives around me and what confusion it will create!