2023

It is often said that pain fuels creativity. Like many artists before me, I have been inspired by not only the great masters, but more so by basic human emotions. During my darkest days when I couldn’t articulate my grief from the deaths of loved ones, I turned to art and painted sentiments that I couldn’t put into words. And as ironies of life go, pain is simultaneously a gracious and irreverent wellspring of inspiration. 

Beyond my fondness for surrealism, my works embody that instinctive desire to teleport to a place of comfort and defiance; to slip into a state where absurdities are soothing and liberating. It is an escape from reality’s raw bitterness and misfortunes —much like my own. The disjointed limbs might be a little too on the nose but they depict that period of gloom when I was in pieces, and the masks represent the different faces I wore as defence mechanisms against internal conflicts.

Rightly so, this world tells a story that’s distinctly mine. But as with any profound loss, the journey of putting one’s self back together is both deeply personal and universally resonant. It is my hope that my works take you to a sphere where life’s madness is a transformative force, and leave you with a desire to celebrate its contradictions.

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“How unfortunate it is to experience defeat and go through the motions of life with a slaughtered spirit. It was a cursed year of deaths, inevitable conclusions, being alone in a foreign land as an immigrant no less -- and I survived it all, albeit with a few more battle scars to remind me that the darkness can be turned into a fountain of new hopes and dreams.

I present a collection I’ve created during a low point in my life when tragedies were bountiful and blessings were harder to come by. It is both a protest and a thank you note — for I wouldn’t be here were it not for those highs and lows."

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