My Hands Smell of You

This art exhibition is different. If the name My Hands Smell of You hasn’t piqued your interest as yet, the actual works surely will. The show by Bengaluru artist Krishnaraj Chonat (a Chitrakala Parishath and MSU, Baroda graduate who has had 12 years of experience in painting, sculpting, installations and performance) is designed to act as not only a visual stimuli but also tickle your olfactory senses, giving you the complete experience.
“The commodity culture of today has a homogenising effect that shrinks our world and standardises our experiences, offering us a constructed world of pre-digested experiences and flat images that creates a dulling of the senses,” says Krishnaraj, “So, we crave for a ‘real’ experience. This exhibition is an attempt to explore and investigate the complexities between ‘us’ and ‘our’ environment, the inter-connectedness of every facet of our lives and to identify the far reaching implications of our everyday choices, with a greater emphasis on aesthetics,” he adds.
The show consists of two large installations and three other individual pieces of work. The most remarkable installation is titled My Hands Smell of You. Through research, Krishnaraj realised that a lot of the electronic waste (like computers, printers, faxes, audio and video equipment etc.) that comes into the country from developed nations is in the form of charity, thus being able to bypass the rules of law. Taking cue from this, Krishnaraj used electronic waste donated by his friends and family and also some sandalwood soap to create his work.
“The electronic waste portrays the ‘spill over’ of the ‘great economic boom’ we are witnessing and has become an environmental crisis,” he explains, “By using soap, an everyday product with which we cleanse ourselves, I have attempted to embrace the pressures to progress fast in a world of technological and consumeristic fashion which results in these mountains of waste and a desperate cry for slowing down,” he adds. The exhibition is on till January 13 at Gallery Ske.