Veda Thozhur Kolleri
Veda Thozhur Kolleri (b. 1990 Chennai, India) is an artist working with organic found material, video, photography and drawing. She is interested in the ephemerality of organic material, and how this evidences the passage or accumulation of time. She creates immersive spaces that alternatingly embrace and resist this ephemerality, where the organic material she uses is often framed by glass vitrines held in iron stands.
Her work stems from having lived in suburbs in India, whose developmental ambitions make severe ecological compromises, while her practice is driven by her close relationship to animals, and the landscapes that they lead her too.
Open studios video
This body of work includes drawings of organic objects formed by different processes - a termite infestation, natural growth, or being weathered by the sea. Common to these objects is their deep crevices, indicated by the darkest lines in drawing. Sheets of glass with lines engraved on them are placed over the drawings, held by iron stands. These lines are cast as shadows on the drawings. The title, Skin Stretched Tight Across a Frame, Punctured, refers to a disruptive event that produces a sense of loss after a seemingly stable and prolonged mode of existence and functioning.
Two sets of drawings, one of the movement of the sea on a high tide over a duration of 7 minutes, the other of a termite infestation on a dead mushroom, are placed on light boxes to reveal the layers of time and depth that make up both processes. A video projection, Light Threads the Tunnel/Forgetting uses footage of materials mixing, merging, or melting into one another, interspersed with visuals of light, breath and water.
Skin Stretched Tight Across a Frame, Punctured
Drawings, Iron stands, Light boxes, Glass, Video projection
Variable Dimensions
2020
Rigor mortis
My practice stems from observations of processes of decay, sedimentation, accretion, accumulation, growth and the disappearance of apparent signs of life. I work with organic found objects, papier mache, plaster of paris, refurbished glass, iron, video, and use drawing as a means to imitate these processes - by overlaying, overdrawing; layering.
Livor mortis video documentation
I attempt methods of preservation through collecting objects and embedding them in plaster of paris, sandwiching them between glass and papier mache, or engraving the movement of the force of water or the passage of clouds on pieces of glass - drawings that are displayed as shadows. I simultaneously express a letting go by working with dust, soil, evaporating water, and perishable organic material.
Rigor mortis
My most recent body of work involved mediating a series of interactions between soil and water in varying quantities, thinking through river, canal, dam, aquarium, flood, and drought. I view my practice as a rehearsal of loss which dwells on the process of dying by anticipating death and identifying signs of life after death. This preoccupation with disappearance and death emerges from a space of anxiety.
Livor mortis
Working with organic or (sub)urban detritus, and engaging the linguistic and material vocabulary of the organic or mortal world, are attempts to overcome it. I have recently begun to use Arduino boards to control movement or life in an installation and am working towards developing one whose process can sustain itself in my absence. This is a direction I am interested in pursuing while navigating concerns around death and mortality
Livor mortis
