Pond Life, “Places that feel like Home”
A
pond is a food web of floating algae and aquatic plants, housing snails, fish,
beetles, bugs, frogs, dragonflies and other life; providing habitat for a
biological community referred to as ‘pond life’.
This
series is inspired by the two ponds in the Art District of Alembic City,
Baroda.
The
pond is a still, fresh water body that supports a unique biodiversity within
itself; analogous to the rich artist community of the city, an inimitable biodiversity,
a combination of webs where all kinds of art and artists thrive. Returning to Baroda
after a long hiatus of seventeen years, I have been pondering my relationship
with it during the four months of the residency at Space Studio. Studying the
historical and contemporary maps of the city, while I visit places from memory;
running into people from the past while making new friends.
Living
in a mixed bag of emotions and liminal spaces, I develop a new series titled,
“Places that feel like Home”.
Baroda
definitely is a place that feels like home.
There
are some others, but in the last four months I explore and renew my connection
with this city from my past. I unearth historical maps from the Geddes
collection in the Mandvi library and set these in gold. The contemporary maps I
find chart the growth and development, the extent of the spread in all
directions.
Baroda,
an old lover/ a lover from the past, never forgotten, kept safe in my heart
welcomes me back.
This
residency has provided me the time and space to re-kindle my love affair with a
place that feels like home.
“Nymphae”, Water Lily of
the Sun
Nymphae
from Greek nymphaia and Latin nymphaea, is the botanical name for the water
lily.
Inspired
by the nymphs of Greek and Latin mythology, water lilies descended from the
early divergence among the flowering plants before the rise of a core group of
angiosperms (genus of flowering plants). In the context of ‘deep time’, water
lilies offer a unique window into the early evolution of the flowering plants
and are important players in the aquatic eco-system.
An
Egyptian legend associated with the upper Nile, describes the blue water lily as
the source of all creation. Emerging from the chaotic darkness of the primal
waters to reveal the sun God Nefer-temu, a youthful figure, often carried
around as a good luck charm, He represents the ‘first rays of the sun and the
delightful smell of the blue lotus’.
Baroda,
my youthful lover, a good luck charm, where my artful self takes birth; the
circle is complete.
Nidhi Khurana
22nd
March, 2022
Baroda
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