Totems, 2021, Paper (books) with Duco paint on Mild Steel rods - 7' height x 12" diameter

Weddings are occasions for cheer, laughter and rituals. Also for expensive and often wasteful show of extravagance and pomp. The offer to create a visual wall for a farmhouse wedding in South Delhi was a challenge and a good opportunity to experiment with what constitutes as decorations. The porous wall to be made was to visually block the two areas in the same hall thereby moving the attendees around the wall. The seven feet totems came to be made of discarded books with folded pages and red colour painted all over them. Coming up with the design was not as difficult as one would have expected as the client was open to experimentation. Anything that would say avant-garde!

The planning and sourcing of the specific material (books in this case) weren’t that difficult as many scrap dealers trade with old books. A book carries a hint of the past. To set them up in a particular form was the troublesome part. Troublesome, but exciting. A learning experience (pun intended). The people who assembled the installation at the wedding found it strange as to how it’d look posh enough to fit in with the lustrous decorations at the wedding venue. The surprise was theirs. Once installed the response of the client and their guests later on during the occasion were just rewards for the efforts. The forgotten and scrapped books also got a new lease of life though not as something they’d been originally created for but they got another day of recognition and appreciation. Totems in this case acquired a spiritual significance and became symbols/beacons of reuse or repurposing of forgotten symbols of truth and learning. A humbling thought.