UNIDEE Resident 2017: Murari Jha
My work is inspired by personal and political narrative, everyday experience of the social politics, politics of my body and space.
My process usually involves research across various fields, probing and exploring existing bodies of knowledge related to my fields of interest. Process is very important in my practice which comes from the social inquiry, process of the liberal body and object and investigation into identity in different layers. I celebrate the labour and sexuality of a body, in public and private space, as I constantly test my limits. My work stands as a dialogue or response to the architectural space, objectification of body and functionality of the object. My work develops around multiple work that simultaneously incorporate a variety of mediums like painting, performance, site specific, installation and video that I am deeply involved in bring them into my practice and producing a body of work.
I collect urban/rural debris which has social, cultural and historical politic,politic of labour body/object= (using Art Povera and Fluxus as a trigger). At the same time I use my body as an art work (live art)I am very much interested to explore the possibilities performative.
I am very happy to be the part of INLAKS/UNIDEE RESIDENCY because I believe the opportunity will help me to explore new avenues while simultaneously extending my current practice. This will certainly change the process of interaction. I am confident that this opportunity will give me a platform where I can use my full potential to explore my practice. As a young artist, I am sure I will be benefited from the exposure and the challenge of this project that will help me in exploring the complexity of the performative/process +politics of body/object, social politic/sexuality+ structure &space=body as an object/object as a body. The UNIDEE will involve negotiating the self and the new spaces and it would consolidate my practice and create new body of work over the span of the residency
Please find below a few images from a recent project. Titled UDHAAR (BORROW) the work was conceived during my time at HH Arts Spaces.
About the Work: This Piece is a live-art and Installation work, concerned with the complex web of working of desire, morality and anxiety in our society. Jha sees performance as a potent release, to reclaim ownership of ones own body, time and space. Drawing upon personal narrative, memory dream, and the every day the artist enters into the dialogue with: the politics of sexuality,(aspiration and seduction), identity politics (existential questions), and social politic(religion and morality: our coding), in his attempts to archive a future that is layered with alternative realities.
