Siren’s Daughter
In Between the Notes | Group exhibition at Experimenter, Kolkata, August 2023
Biraaj Dodiya, Lala Rukh, Parul Thacker, Superhero Sighting Society (Taus Makhacheva & Sabih Ahmed) and Samson Young
Press: The Telegraph, T2 Telegraph
Siren’s Daughter I-VIII
Oil paint and polyester body filler on galvanized and mild steel
2023
Fugue for Yesterday I-IX
Mixed media on paper
15” x 11.5” inches each
2023
“Biraaj Dodiya’s works are rooted in personal metaphors, exploring aspects of sound as coded language and as noise. Often referring to ruination and form through ideas of support, structure, material and surface. A new suite of paintings on metal, represent Dodiya’s ongoing thoughts on support, anchored in the haunting sounds that the memories of medical stretchers evoke. The central form in these works, alludes to the fragile or the absent body. The structure of the works mimic the stretcher of a painting — the physical armature on which paintings are built, nurtured, invented, repaired and rescued. A series of works on paper accompany the metal ‘stretchers’. Dodiya’s works in the exhibition are analogous with the unstoppable buzzing and humming sounds of our inner and outer worlds. One, the siren, a loud alarming sound from our metropolitan world which signals danger, imminent emergencies and alerts ‘all listeners’. Our mortality remains an inevitable reality, pulsing through the ink of newspaper images of warzones and freak accidents. The other sound, characterizes the private voice, the constant ringing - a visceral mimesis of the nature of thought.”