Bursary Showcase: Hetal Chudasama

Artsadmin Bursary artist Hetal Chudasama shares a durational performance and installation, entitled ‘Directing water into a dew point – Incremental Repetition.’ 

Know it

Any presence is no more familiar

Than our goddess of the jungle

Arms in arms they levitate

Stray bundles of blessings

You pick and choose

Sit – Sleep

Snore

Sneer

Spool that thread you just picked from the air

I’ll deliver just the tool

Come

Voice

The day sets and I’m old

Seek shorelines

Come as water

And bring a stone

Together we shall hang it.

Directing water into a dew point – incremental repetition is a long duration performance and an installation . Films, text, drawings merge with live-action to turn the space at Toynbee Studios into a cave where spells are broken. The performance is divided into 30 minute slots. Six members of the audience will be invited during each slot to experience/ participate in an intimate space together with the artist in order to create a collective imagining and thought making process. The visitors are encouraged to bring a stone or a pebble of any size they may feel fit to carry during their visit. Stone acts as a metaphor for a painful burden. There is no real scale to measure pain. Pain is immeasurable in all its forms. The pain of loss is the worst – loss of active body, loss of freedom, identity, and self. And yet we must scale it, lift it, lower it, lighten it. Deriving from a point of widespread despair, mental illness, disconnectedness and spiritual loss the artist will create a space for collective mourning and re-imagining of a stronger moral strength. This piece is an exercise to touch on a very individual sense of joy snatched out from loss. It enables the conditions for conceiving visions of our present and future collectively.

“It’s been so inspiring working alongside these five artists over the last year. I’ve learned so much from their capacity to adapt, imagine and rest in unimaginable challenges of a pandemic. I see in all five of the Bursary artists an energy to take on an uncertain future and map a new landscape of artistry that leads from curiosity, criticality and hope.”

– Michael Norton