Shadow scenes Installation

Cinnamon Colomboscope 2015’s ‘Shadow Scenes’ exhibition at the Rio Hotel and Cinema, Slave Island featuring both international and local artists, the group exhibition curated by Natasha Ginwala and Menika van der Poorten engages the city through aspects of urbanization, colonial legacy, social identity, and communal memory, while undertaking a cinematic reading of modernity as a resonant field of violence.

Each of the rooms within the erstwhile 7-storey Rio Hotel and Cinema will be transformed from a ‘living ruin’ into a common stage for atmospheric works in a range of mediums from painting, installation, sound and text-based works, to photography, film and performance.

My installation speaks to the loss of identity due to this practice born of fear. And in doing this, we lose ourselves, we lose our religion. And isn’t religion all about a heightened self knowledge? A sense of peace? A sense of quiet? The shrines will overflow with imagery of the all the things that crowd our lives - things we don’t need; clutter; white noise. My shrines will present the audience with all the tension of that endless contradiction and beg the questions: Are they shrines or facades? Do we really have religion or a multitude of false gods?

I want to carry through this imagery of religion, faith and worship in my art work. I have chosen to use shrines to convey the things that people around me seem to worship. Clinging to social norms for fear of doing anything differently and being judged for it is universal and transcends geography and race. There is a tendency to substitute things that we would really enjoy doing with more acceptable forms of social engagement.