Data diaries | Thukral & Tagra's 'Arboretum'
New work by Thukral & Tagra explores what it means to remain human in digital times
During the pandemic, Delhi-based artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra—better known as Thukral & Tagra—conceived a new body of work called Arboretum. It emerged from a preoccupation with the natural environment and the way technology had become inseparable from how we perceive it. Ideas of glitch and data began to shape their ways of seeing trees and they designed the wooden structures themselves, bars carved directly into the frame as integrated hanging devices.
During the pandemic, Delhi-based artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra—better known as Thukral & Tagra—conceived a new body of work called Arboretum. It emerged from a preoccupation with the natural environment and the way technology had become inseparable from how we perceive it. Ideas of glitch and data began to shape their ways of seeing trees and they designed the wooden structures themselves, bars carved directly into the frame as integrated hanging devices.
The residue this process left behind has resulted in Mimesis, their new exhibition that explores how lived moments are translated into pixels, bars and fragmented visual units. “As our days are stretched across online and offline realms, our experience today is being archived, measured and reshaped in algorithmic rituals. In this evolving digital condition, this exhibition asks what it means to inhabit worlds built through data and mediated images,” share the duo. Through hundreds of canvases depicting imagined data structures, this work grounds the fleeting abstraction of the digital world in the slow, physical weight of paint.
—The exhibition is on view till Jul. 17 at Ashvita’s Flagship, Mylapore, Chennai
