Video artist Ashish Avikunthak’s themes explore the impermanence of time, and he believes “cinema is the only medium that allows me to work with temporality”. The Kolkata native’s latest, Rati Chakravyuh (2013), features six newly-wed couples and a priestess, who meet at a desolate temple after a mass wedding and speak of time and existence in a metaphysical context. They offer alternative truths to Indian myth and history: Sita wasn’t abducted by Ravana, she fell in love and wanted to be with him; Indira Gandhi becomes an avatar of Durga and a red Maruti is an incarnation of Hanuman. In the end, the couples and priestess commit suicide but Avikunthak’s analogy is that death isn’t the end, but “an entry into a universe where time does not exist – a productive possibility of infinity.”
Rati Chakravyuh will be shown from June 24 at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai. Chatterjeeandlal.com
Rati Chakravyuh (2013), Ashish Avikunthak
By Sophia Ann French June 23rd, 2014
