Remembering the Crooked Line: The Skin of the Nation
Partition and Maps/Cartography
Remembering the Crooked Line is an anti-memorial to the partitions of the 20th century. It is an art project grounded in intensive investigation of borders and cartography as technologies of colonization, nation-building, and ethnic divisions. This multi-part installation functions as an archive that makes transnational connections between nations that have been partitioned in the 20th century.
Maps as the skin of the nation are explored in Remembering the Crooked Line art exhibition. This anti-memorial reframes maps and cartography, as corporeal forms. It examines the partitions of countries worldwide from the twentieth century - India, Ireland, Palestine, Cyprus, Vietnam, Korea, Germany, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The materials used in this installation are very consciously chosen to create a skin like effect. Raw silk, khaddar cotton dyed with tea, dupioni silk, handmade paper, hair, thread, turmeric, surgical sutures, and pig guts. Wax has been used to stiffen the fabrics and create hollow sculptural forms. My goal is to engage the viewers in a visceral way.
