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invisible exerpt.mp3Excerpt from the (In)visible audio
(In)visible
Wire sculptures with audio (duration: 40 minutes) and miscellaneous objects.
Dimensions: variable Year 2018
This work is an exploration of perception, patience, and the invisible layers that shape our domestic lives.
The installation was originally designed to be experienced, not just seen. Visitors enter a pitch-dark room, guided only by a single, dim yellow LED bulb. The work itself is intentionally hidden, demanding a physical adjustment. It takes several moments for the eyes to accustom to the darkness, and in that period of sensory adjustment, the work slowly begins to reveal itself.
The first element to register is sound. A continuous audio compilation plays from a speaker hidden within the installation. You are hearing the work long before you can truly see it. As your eyes finally adjust, the visual component emerges - or, more accurately, refuses to fully emerge. The sculptures are made of thin wire painted white, set against a white background. They are camouflaged, almost blending into nothing. In the dim light, they are perceived as fragile lines, or sometimes, only through the faint, thin shadows they cast on the wall.
The Spark: From Cleaning to Critique
The idea for this work sparked from a personal, almost mundane experience. During a festival season, I spent several days engaged in the intense, repetitive task of cleaning my own home for hours on end. Slowly, this act transformed from a chore into a form of meditation.
New "ways of seeing" emerged from this prolonged focus. I was directly confronting my own consumption patterns - the sheer volume of objects I owned, the things I needed, and the things I just had. I realized that my personal symptom of having more things than I needed wasn't just a personal failing; it was a reflection of a larger, often invisible, design: the pervasive structure of consumerism.
Capturing the 'Untidied'
This realization directly shaped the project's method. To capture the authentic, unfiltered atmosphere of other domestic spaces, I visited friends and acquaintances unannounced.
This was a crucial part of the process. Arriving unannounced meant that no one had time to "tidy up" - not just their physical space, but their social selves. It allowed me to record the real, ambient, "untidied" soundscape of their lives, not the curated, "guest-ready" version.
The wire sculptures are "invisible" just as the pressures of consumerism and the labor of cleaning often are. The audio you hear is the "untidied" reality of the homes shaped by those very pressures. Invisible is an invitation to slow down, to wait for your senses to catch up, and to find the profound substance that exists in the shadows, the background noise, and the unexamined patterns of our own lives.
for Yabya Kewat, it is concept that precedes the crafting of objects. Kewat spent three years ideating the concept for his installation — Invisible Visible, that was put together at the BVP exhibition this year. Hardcore minimalist Kewat wanted to display how human beings hoard more things than we actually consume.
“Back in the day when this journey began, I was no minimalist. But, then I started cleaning and getting rid of unnecessary stuff. I was spending 16 hours a day trying to tidy things up in my kitchen and my bedroom and I realised that there is so much that we mindlessly accumulate for the offchance what-ifs. This epiphany became the trigger for basing my installation on this concept,” shared Kewat, also a final year fine arts (sculptures) student at BVP, who in the following month went around interviewing people in their everyday lives, busy in their normal routines. “I would arrive at their houses, unannounced, so that they had no chance to tidy their spaces. And then we had eccentric conversations about a forgotten comb behind the curtains or an unpacked shoebox bought ages ago,” she recalled. This exercise not only reaffirmed Kewat his concept but also made him realize that it often takes a third-party perspective to make the invisible, visible and highlight things that we don’t tend to notice in our everyday existence.
Invisible Visible was an amalgamation of random objects — broken cups, a pair of slippers, soil pots and others. Kewat generated symbolism by making wire structures to outline the invisible and thereby making it visible. “I also incorporated audio — I played a 45-minute audio-clip of the incomplete fragments of my conversations with people and that became another symbol. It was about how people successfully got the whole essence despite listening to incomplete fragments,” elaborated Kewat.
Kewat is an environment enthusiast and his artworks often raise uncomfortable questions about our interactions with the environment. Another installation he worked on was called Novel Nature. In this, he experimented with red pieces of cloth to draw people’s attention to unacknowledged definitions of environment.
For Kewat, the invasive nature of art installations is what drives him. He feels that they empower him to intervene and entrust him with a responsibility to better the world.
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