Tejal Shah

'SLEEP'

The second artist in the residency to come from a filmmaking background or a camera background in this case was Tejal Shah. While in Reza's case the Camera itself played a peripheral documentative role, Tejal's behind the camera position, was initially used as a method to distance herself from the situation.

Her initial work done during her academic stint in USA involved a very calm but confusing steady shot of the Michigan Lake. Until she said it that the scene was the flat early morning shot of the Horizon as visible from the Michigan lake shore, the scene looked very undecipherable interspersed with the ambient sounds of a telephonic conversation with her mother in Mumbai merged with the existing early morning songs which resulted in a very meditative video composition.

Most other works before were more tongue in cheek video performances twisting around the held notions of Gender Stereotypes using popular syntaxes from Bollywood role play structures or commenting on the citizen nation by casually getting inputs on immediate histories.

Tejal's Performance entitled 'Sleep' had her strung out on a hammock outside the window of her first floor studio holding a cord connected to a hammock placed in the middle of the room where the audience was expected to lie down one at a time. Right above the interior hammock was a projection bounced off from a 45-degree mirror with the projector on the floor. The footage was beamed directly, constructing associations with multiple female identities within the context of a common task as it had shot footage of women sleeping, mumbling, and singing with their head on the pillow. This footage was edited into a loop and projected on Tejal's body.... and the entire procedure was then shot from a stationary camera on a tripod. Beautifully constructed and composed in the unlit studio space ... the only light was ambient, filtering in off the street casting a larger than life shadow of Tejal across the projection.