"Something is Happening" Exhibition

Whenever we walk into a gallery, we are often so overwhelmed by the art surrounding us that we put little to no thought into how the pieces came about, placed where we see them, against the stark white walls, almost entirely dismissing the effort put in by perhaps hundreds of individuals, each doing their part to create this pristine whole. 

This realization dawned upon me, yet again, as I, along with the rest of the Digital Processes class, and J& J embarked on the journey of putting together our exhibition, “Something is Happening” in the Mudd Gallery, on the bright Wednesday afternoon of February the 19^th.

We divided the work. Chris and I took it upon us to transport the pedestals to keep the class’s photobooks on, from Wriston. Later, I hung around the gallery and did everything that demanded the expertise of a 6 foot tall individual – like adjusting the lighting and putting up the title of the show on the wall. When deciding on the placement of each artist's pieces, which I can tell, would perhaps lead to a clash of ideas in the real-world setting, we were able to come together as a class and make a unified decision.

After we were done, we all stood in the room that was just an empty space with white walls only 3 hours ago, and were proud of what we had created – a new space that allowed for the visual stimulation of the viewer.

The gallery opening the following day was a success, regardless of the stormy weather. After spending weeks taking photographs, editing, eventually picking out two images and framing them to be hung in a gallery space, it was a satisfying experience to just be the spectator, and take in all the works, not individually but as a collective whole, reflecting a communal effort.

Posing next to my pieces and the exhibition title at the gallery opening
Photo by Ahin Ju, taken on my iPhone

Sound-Escape: Using Sound to Recreate a Day in My Life

For soundscape, I attempted to recreate the sounds I hear each day when I'm home in New Delhi, from the moment I wake up to the early afternoon.

It starts with birds chirping on my window, the milkman ringing the doorbell to deliver the morning full-cream and my mother stirring tea for my father in the kitchen as a dozen cats encircle her feet. It would be an understatement to say I enjoyed myself while working with GarageBand. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the creative process, I got carried away, creating a piece that was twice and a half as long as I initially intended for it to be.

 

As I worked on this project, a sense of nostalgia came upon me. The fact that these sounds were fragments I put together from a variety of sources - voice recordings my mother sent me, voicemails from my friends, found sound effects on the internet - started to fade away and this piece as a whole, began to perfectly replicate my personal reality. That put me in two very different states of mind. One, where I was proud to have succeeded in what I set out to do, the other, where I craved to re-live my childhood, wondering how often, if at all, I would be able to experience these sounds again. The feeling was both beautiful and sad, all at once. 

At home, in the morning, from within my sheets, there is no escaping from these sounds. As Marshall McLuhan puts it, "We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us" (McLuhan, 11). I grew up wanting desperately to dismiss them, to shut them out, but today, as I sit and listen to this piece over and over again, I long for my ears to be filled with these sounds again, to be home, just perhaps, for one more morning.  

Photo Book Layout

At first, Snapfish nearly brought me down to tears, and I was certainly not the first to have felt flustered by its limitations . Even so, I decided to persevere, to give myself time each day for these past 4 days to work on my photo book, and alas, I was able to end this ongoing battle of frustration and emerge unharmed, photo book in hand.

Page 1 of Photo Book

As I put my photos together, I tried to chronicle my journey, starting from the collapsed toy trains I found while waiting for my Spiced Chai Latte at Harmony and ending at the last photograph I took, of the garage door sign on Retired and Broke Drive. 

Even though every photograph is meant to have its own personal narrative, one that I hint at in each's title, there were often moments where I found interesting narrative being shared between two photographs. For example, pages 6 and 7 of the book (see below) which contain the images titled, "Up Is The Wrong Way" & "But There Are Berries Hanging From The Sky"compliment each other, not just narratively, but in their color schemes, in their composition - the crispness of the bright reds against the stark blues. 

Pages 6 and 7 of Photo Book

Click Here To View My Photo Book