RSS / Venice Biennale, 2015

His garden, one hundred years later

Technique : Found objects, resin, dried flowers, twigs, rope, wires, cloth, grain, glass, nails, wood, rice paperand paint.

Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open yours doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of a hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years. The Gardner, 1915, Rabindranath Tagore.

He wrote this poem a hundred years ago... I can hear the sounds of birds chirping and smell the fragrance of spring as he describe it...One can feel the purity of world from a bygone era where everything was raw, natural, earthy and real.

One hundred years hence, how will poetry read? Will the birds still chrip the quiet of the mornings? Will be still inspired or humbled by nature? Will it still have the power to take our breathe away? How will we write about nature then? How will we represent in art? Will computer imagery take over real drawing and painting?

This piece is based on Rabindranath Tagore, a man who penned thousands of poems, novels, stories, songs, dance drama dramas and essay's as well as hundred's of sketches, painting and doodles. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the west and vice versa. His compositions were chosen by two nations as their national anthems: Indian's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla and the original song of Sri Lanka's National Anthem was also written and tuned by Tagore.