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Central Saint Martins, UAL, London, June 2024 

Process 

Wished - detail a.jpg

Wished

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Empty blister pack pockets joined together (approx.109,700), steel structure, connector rings and mesh

350 x 80 x 80 cm

June 2024

Wished - detail.jpg
Wished - detail.jpg

Hindu people tie Mauli (sacred thread) on holy trees and around temple premises. As they do this they wish for the betterment of their health. Tying Mauli attaches the feelings that prompt such wishes to the physical world of trees and temple railings. The wishes are grounded in reality, even if they are not granted. This is how votive offerings work. In contemporary India, the world in which I grew up, it is possible to link prayer-like actions like this to the scientific rituals of pill taking.

This piece evokes a prayer column that has had 109, 700 (approx) empty pocket spaces of blister packs tied around it. To achieve this structure I have threaded them on light chains, as you might make a bracelet or a necklace. For me, the vertical column resembles the trunk of a Banyan tree (in the ancient Bhagavata-Purana, the trunk is associated with Lord Vishnu, the world’s protector). The implication is that each empty pocket has become an offering. By joining these empty pockets together, and tying them around a column, I have, by analogy, metamorphosed their material condition into a sacred one.

I have made an artwork that invites people to move around it in a circular motion. To experience Wished you will be performing circumambulations (pradakshina). According to Hindu mythology, this action connects you to the divine. I find that I cannot let go of the ingrained feelings I have about this spiritual practice. Consequently, the way you physically interact with the column has significance for me. I associate it with an act of worship. The mundane routine of taking pills may be bigger than we think. Once you treat it as a ritualistic practice it is not difficult to also treat the disposal of empty blister packs as a form of defilement.


 

Poojan Gupta 2015. All rights reserved.

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