INDIA

Begumpura - A Face Without Sorrow, GUZz.

Installation with drawings, vaniable dimensions.

The 15th century leather-working saint, Ravidas strikes a powerful hegemony-defying image in India. The reformist mystic is credited with the vibrant vision of a polity founded on egality, called Begumpura (literally the city without sorrow]. Conceived as a utopia without hierarchies, taxes, and surveillance, Begumpura would allow free mobility and full freedom to nurture one's desires. Reclaiming the socially ordained medium of the saint, i.e. animal hide, Prasad started listening out for the resonances of Begumpura in the contemporary. As the goatskin dries and becomes taut, it is able to take on new vibrations that can ripple through oceans, forests, animals, cities, tools, humans, machines, and plants. Begumpura reveals nature to be this lively medley of myriad agents — chemical, biological, and technological.