Artist Name: Nishi Praveen Kumar
Title: Life in a year
Materials: Colour pens and Spirograph
A spirograph is a geometric drawing device that is often given to children to play around with, a toy to draw! It creates elaborate and technical-looking spiral drawings. To me, this toy represents everything wrong in our society. This drawing series represents what life means to me, a lesson 2020 taught me.
To be a child is to be carefree, curious, and free. To make mistakes. To escape into our imagination. And this makes me wonder Why do we give this toy, a spirograph to a child? Art is supposed to messy, exciting, surreal, and playful but this so-called toy curbs a child's imagination. The world around forces the child to live in this grid-like spiral cage. The perfect mathematical design that results from this toy makes it seem like everything we do needs to have logic behind it, a bag full of evidence to support the case. This toy symbolizes the society's rules a child should learn at a very young age in order to have a perfect life.
The year 2020 taught me how to escape from societal expectations and rules. To believe that society doesn't dominate who we are, WE DO. We need to learn how to embrace our flaws and imperfections. Learn to accept change and invest in ourselves. To understand that not everything has to be perfect, some things are just not meant to be. And last but not least to take one day at a time.
This series is a collection of spirographic designs when put in a particular pattern explains my journey in the year 2020. The reason why I didn't number my drawings, which if I did will help in figuring out the puzzle is because life doesn't come with a manual, we need to go over the pieces again and again until we believe that this is what we want. I picked a circular spirographic pattern to represent the circle of life. The irregular circles formed when placing the drawing together symbolizes how our life circle doesn't have to be like the circle formed by the spirograph. Our life is not meant to be flawless. Physical, mental, and spiritual growth is often found in discomfort. Our struggles make our life meaningful. Our circle represents a journey of going through something and the something we have overcome.
The two circles at the top that intersects represent my past and future. The reason why those circles are bigger than the intersection that represents the present is beacuse I was constantly stuck in my past and if I was not thinking about the past my focus would shift towards envisioning my future. It almost felt like I never lived in the present. Being stuck in one place for a year made me realize that life is not about what I did or what I do but about "what I was doing now", thus the intersection flows into creating a circle that has no start or end. It's a circle of my life, to understand that it is okay to not be okay, just never be afraid of growing. The inner child in you is ageless.
