Reversed Curses | JUSTIN COOMBES

WORK IN PROGRESS

Artist’s book (‘Gurgaon Gita’), full colour, 120 pp; Artist’s film (‘A Psychosis of Reason’), 14 min HD; Wall texts, framed Lightjet photographs and duratran prints in light boxes (dimensions variable)

Using combinations of a 400-line rhyming poem I have composed and photographs and film I shot in Northern India, this project is the second part of my Triple Enlightenment trilogy.

In ‘Reversed Curses’, we see the world from the viewpoint of Aarav, an Indian Railways clerk who is approaching retirement. His interior conversations, with his god Krishna and other voices, are told as a long sequence of lentos: a form of eight-line, rhyming verse. The central theme of ‘Reversed Curses’ is religious faith, and how to lead a good life without it. Reflecting on those pertinent questions that Prince Arjuna fails to ask of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, Aarav runs over the text of the Gita in his head and takes issue with many of Krishna’s assertions. Krishna’s benign voice morphs into those of others characters who do not seem to have Aarav’s best interests at heart.

If Aarav loses his faith, how will he create meaning in his world? And if faith has cursed his life, how can he reverse the curse? These, and other questions are posed alongside a fast-changing backdrop of contemporary India. The project plays on the repetition and reversals of train journeys and the paradox that, as Kierkegaard wrote, ‘Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards’.

‘Gurgaon Gita’, Artist’s book, full colour: 120 pp