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Objects for Nomination: Found Objects Looking for a Caring Indian Artist
Hemant Sareen
In his essay, Our Symbols, from Issue 72 Hemant Sareen discusses Indian artists’ role in transforming commonplace Indian objects into a collectively recognized repository for symbolic meaning. Key to this process is the “pure and potent act of nomination.” Within the photographs for this series Hemant sensitively reveals everyday objects and scenes from suburban New Delhi that beg the question: will the next Subodh Gupta please nominate me?
“In order to designate reality, Buddhism says sunya, the void; but better still: tathata, as Alan Watts has it, the fact of being this, of being thus, of being so; tat means that in Sanskrit and suggests the gesture of the child pointing his finger at something and saying: that, there it is, lo! but says nothing else…”
Page 5, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes
Hemant Sareen is a freelance writer, editor and photographer based in New Delhi. He studied International Politics at the University of Leeds. His book reviews and articles have been published in India and abroad.