‘MITHYĀ” …. A bamboo installation at Serendipity Arts Festival 2023
In culture, ‘deception’ is a means to demonstrate intelligence over strength in the face of an adversary. The art of deception, a poetic and optimistic essence shared by both humans and animals, conjures a magnificent dance of attraction and withdrawal, a profound illusionary skill rather than plain illusion.
Bamboo, like the art of deception, symbolizes this duality. Its external frailty reveals an inner strength akin to intelligence prevailing over might. Bamboo’s purportedly pliable nature successfully conceals its toughness, enticing artists, engineers, and architects throughout the centuries, as deception relies on illusion and misdirection for its purposes.
The installation takes traditional basketry and bridge cable and magnifies them into architectural features to reinterpret and withhold attention to bamboo’s hidden potential. Much like a lived experience, the pavilion’s deceptive charm, created through interplay of color and creative design, aims to sustain the quest for creative fulfillment and continuous interpretation—an experiential mystery.
The pavilion is an architectural interpretation of structure and constructional information innate to bamboo. The thematic interpretation of ‘deception’ goes handy with the use of bamboo in this installation. The lines of forces are fragmented-a deliberate attempt to blur the clarity over mechanism of load transfer through ingenuity in construction of the various structural elements of support to span.
The pavilion intends to fill the unfound gap e.g. mystery is in approximation expressed through multiple elements and not a precise single perfect element.
Exhibit for: Serendipity Arts Festival
Area: 20 Sq. M.
Status: Completed; Dec 2023