DOOM ORGAN
Exhibited at the the sixth Kochi-Muziris Biennale: For the Time Being curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, Dec ‘25- March ‘26
DOOM ORGAN
Oil paint and polyester body filler on galvanized and mild steel, with oil paintings on linen and archival print on paper
2025
“For the Kochi-Muzris Biennale, Dodiya presents DOOM ORGAN, an installation that combines painted steel sculptures, small scale paintings on linen and photographs. Merging together the diagrammatic and charged atmosphere of the sports arena and the silence of a mortuary, Dodiya composes a fictionalized space that explores the poetics of the dualities of our current moment and questions how we remember.
A series of painted metal sculptures that allude to the forms of medical stretchers and autopsy tables, along with solitary basketball posts anchor the installation. Additionally, paintings and photographs hover between body and landscape. On the brink of losing form, focus, and familiarity; bearing traces of their making and unmaking; layers of earthy pigment accumulate and erode in the act of painting, leaving clues of burial and excavation.
These images carry influences of the port city and imagine an ancient ‘doom organ’ that sings in us all. Inspired by the long horizon of the enveloping ocean, the textured walls of the Kappiri shrine, a deluge that ruined Muzris and birthed Kochi, and from elsewhere, a flood of violent images of bruised bodies carried, held and then disposed on our phone screens. The doom organ remembers the names, the faces, the silenced voices; it asks what does it mean to win, to lose, to go on?
Elocution over absent bodies is evidence. The doom organ beats on.”