Siddhant Choudhury
Siddhant Choudhury
I hope that this body of work challenges the audience to criticise some aspects of their culture, especially the Indian audience. Nevertheless, at the same time, I want the audience to understand how religion is a common theme in all my pieces. I want the audience to feel at home, filled with a sense of sanctity that takes them back to their childhood days when their parents used to take them to temples at the weekends or give them presents for Christmas. I want my pieces to embody a sense of peace with the help of religious iconography to soften the critical questioning that I want my audience to endure.
My vision for my exhibition is to create a narrative of religion that presents both its good and bad sides, showing the audience its hypocritical behaviours surrounding sexism and misogyny. However, I want my pieces also to carry a sense of duality that showcases how religion can bring feelings of home, build relationships and connect us through the synchrony of our core beliefs. My artwork mainly focuses on symbolism, whether hands representing a mother's production or a starburst alluding to my personality. Moreover, I use colours to connote different meanings, like the yellow paint used to colour my statue, referring to "turmeric skin" in Bengali culture. My artworks also heavily use "bling", in a sense, glitter and rhinestones that allude to drag queens and gay culture. My artworks are an embodiment of me, my culture and my beliefs.
All my work has a flowing theme of religion and cultural aspects. I am also influenced by the trips my mum used to take me to every Saturday back in India, to different temples, or that one time I went to Tamil Nadu and saw the statue of Balaji, adorned in gold and diamonds or the multiple "idol-makers" of Kumartuli painting heavenly bodies by their hands in dark alleyways of Kolkata and the glitz and glitter of the gay community that I am proudly a part of. I have clustered my art pieces together to look like a clump of jumbled thoughts one has growing up, where they question everything. My art pieces also follow sub-series that focus on their particular issues while still staying inside the relevant overarching theme.
A 3D element is essential; it makes the audience walk around and look closely, physically engaging them. I also use shiny things like glitter and foil to really play with light and grab the audience's attention with shifting lights. I remember growing up with my parents going to "pandals", which were a king of temples of sorts set u[p for the five days of Durga Puja in India. I remember seeing beautiful statues that were multi-coloured and filled with glitter and glamour; I remember always seeing small statues, about 2 feet tall, being sold for just a few dollars, and me crying to my mom and begging her to buy me some of them. I want to trigger memories like that for the audience; it is specific, but I am sure everyone has a memory of begging their parents to buy something for them as kids; for me, it's those statues I have made for my exhibition. I want the audience to look closely at the statues, look into their eyes, take in their details, from my laser cut jewellery pieces to the rhinestones that sparkle in the light. Yes, my artworks have an overarching theme, but they have subsections of different narratives within them. Hence they are placed together within their smaller bubbles while still having the same big meaning. I am using my childhood experiences with material objects, like statues to convey these themes. I want my audience to really consider their part in culture, how they bring themselves, their friends or even their kids up, and what part they play in others' lives. I also want my audience to question their social systems and cultural norms… What makes something normal and what part they play in others' lives? I also want my audience to question their social systems and cultural norms… What makes something normal?