Sudarshan Shetty

A Breath Held Long
The video proposes an intersection between voice, body and the city and the act of breathing as a metaphor for a life within an urban landscape. The work brings together a group of actors and singers from Mumbai whose performances unfold through a series of single-line narratives and music. The lines, without punctuation, that speaks of short personal events within the city, demand an awareness of breath as a temporal medium. The act of breathing in and out become compositional devices- intervals through which rhythm and exhaustion surface as material conditions for speaking and being.

Set against the backdrop of Mumbai, the video acknowledges the impossibility of silence within the city. The urban atmosphere, agitated and continuous, seeps into almost every frame. Noise of the city refuses relegation to background. It becomes part of the fabric of a non-linear narrative that collapses the boundary between the city’s collective roar and the performer’s internal state of being. The work positions this density not as disruption but as ground: the condition through which subjectivity is articulated and sustained.

A 7-foot-tall open shelf filled with bags and bunched-up objects, each cast in marble dust and resin. The shelf, towering yet open, serves as a symbolic container for these objects, frozen in time. The bags, with their contents indistinctly shaped and tightly bundled, evoke a sense of mystery and hidden stories, as though preserving personal belongings or memories.
The use of marble dust and resin gives the objects a stone-like, timeless quality, contrasting with the softness and pliability one would expect from bags and fabrics. This material transformation emphasizes themes of preservation, weight, and permanence, as if these everyday items have been fossilized, holding onto their histories. The piece may invite viewers to reflect on what we carry with us—both physically and emotionally—and the ways in which ordinary objects can become vessels of meaning, frozen in time yet replete with imagined narratives.

Monuments are built in order to remember using a simple logic; they provide a physical
presence as a response to someone’s absence. As an object it is inherently futile, but the sheer
effort of construction, of carrying out the task, describes the devotion and the longing and the
missing perhaps more strongly than the monument itself. An effort has been made.

"Empty Vessel" is crafted from salvaged teak wood from the second hand markets, that may have belonged to various dismantled structures in and around Mumbai, and each piece must carry unknown stories of its past lives and the function they may have fulfilled. This work merges references to monumental architecture with a hollowed-out half-empty egg, creating a visual metaphor and perhaps an evocation that delves into themes of emptiness, futility of accumulation and its reference to an essential human need to build.

The use of reclaimed wood not only highlights the rich narrative of the city’s ever-changing landscape but also serves as a poignant reminder of what is lost when structures are dismantled. The egg, symbolizing potential and fragility, is carved to reveal an emptiness within—a reflection on the impermanence of all that we attempt to build and the existential questions surrounding our own identities.

As viewers approach the sculpture, they are invited to confront the paradox of building and creating in a world where structures may ultimately serve as mere shells of their former selves. The hollowed interior of the egg echoes the search for meaning within ourselves and our bodies, suggesting that the quest for fulfilment may often lead to an encounter with emptiness.

"Empty Vessel" serve as a meditative space, urging contemplation on the nature of self, the essence of existence, and the cyclical relationship between creation and its demise. Through this the artist invites us to reflect on our own life narratives, the edifices we build, and the philosophical questions that arise from our pursuit of meaning in an ever-evolving world.
@ Gallery Espace
Memory Fields curated by Gayatri Sinha @ Bikaner House