This series of photographs visualize an excerpt from Sumana Roy's sublime essay, Dukkha exploring sadness through the metaphor of water.
The excerpt chosen talks about the transformation of a square being folded into a boat. Each fold in this boat holds and hides things. Although this boat is a container, the folds unravel and it capsizes, merging with the water. Thus when the container capsizes, where does the sadness go, is it the boat or the water?
These metaphors and paradoxes were translated into an installation with hand-drawn text on paper that was folded. Water and ink were made to continuously drip over the installation and the transformation that occurred was photographed and documented. The excerpt of the essay was placed over the images to create the narrative.
The entire series of images on display.
The excerpt from the essay that was used—
"I've only ever made boats before folding squares into triangles and pulling them inside out gently until the likeness of a boat emerged. It was a surprise every single time the genius of folds, of lines and planes, sticking without water's glue. And yet, no matter how much my boat-making improved with practice, the tiny boat never managed to sail without capsizing. The thinness of paper, even with its softness, fails to find appropriate support in a partner like water, it being without a spine itself. Is sadness the paper I'll have to fold into a boat, or the water on which the boat must sail?"
— Sumana Roy,
— Sumana Roy,
Dukkha, SAAG: South Asian Avant Garde: A Dissident Anthology, 4 July 2021
The text belongs to the author and is only used as a visualization.
The text belongs to the author and is only used as a visualization.