The Floor Plan A Fiction | Bharati Kapadia

(Work made for The Living Blanket Project: Bharati Kapadia)

It started with a plan. A floor plan to be exact. Floor plan of my house based on the plan of a temple in India, or Bharat as it was known years ago. My name is Bharati, which is also one of the names of the goddess of learning and wisdom popularly as Saraswati. I wanted to build a house to make it into a home for Bharati and so I based it on the floor plan of an ancient temple of my country.

It is also a portrait of sorts. A portrait of Bharati and her house, which is in Mumbai, a racing, pulsating metropolis that boasts of real estate prices second only to Tokyo and New York, each one a racing, pulsating, global metropolis. As you can guess, it is very expensive to build a house here in Mumbai. But I could build it! The price I had to pay was not in cash but in kind: a lifetime of experiencing my city and all that it has implanted in me. Layer upon layer of lived moments have gone into building a home for my self. Like a cocoon splitting to release a butterfly, or a snake shedding its slough, I have had to reinvent my self again and again so that I could build a house which could become my home.

 Through all the upheavals which go hand-in-hand with the process of becoming, the eye of the beholder in me has been an unwavering witness. I find that not one but two Bharatis have been my constant companions: one, an impartial witness, the other, an ever-changing actor. The two-in-one combo is, I suspect, there to stay. Unless of course the two resolve their differences and merge, which mind you, is a distinct possibility.

In which case I will no longer need a house: with my two companions having dissolved into thin air, there will be no-one to make a home for! In all probabilities, I will find my self resonating in every wave and particle; like space, I will be everywhere and nowhere!

 But for the present, I need to build a house for my self. So that both Bharatis may co-exist under one roof. The roof of the house I have built in the city of Mumbai, the mega metropolis of South East Asia.

 If you look deep under the layers of lived moments which I have made visible for the Living Blanket project, you will see traces of the floor plan drawing of my house based on the plan of an ancient temple: you will see that it all started with a plan, a floor plan to be exact

The Artist: “The surface space of my work, be it paper, canvas,wood or any other, is for me synonymous with the inner space of my being, the core of my self. The drama of life unfolds here. At times a battlefield, at others a playground, it is the ground which receives, contains, holds and carries the marks: the signatures of infinite interactions that take place upon it.” – Bharati Kapadia ( View her  complete profile on : www.bharatikapadia.com )

Bharati Kapadia is a well established Artist and has her work displayed and appreciated in various galleries across the world. You can find her compelete profile at www.bharatikapadi.com