The essence of my current series titled ‘Four’ is a photographic interpretation of my emotional journey through the last four decades of my life. Evolving out of a philosophical take on horizons, this body of work is my poetic and visual story of the dualistic nature of my life, multiplied over the four decades of time spent living it. Realising truths of the here and now as much as questioning the past and the future, the series interprets my beliefs, my struggles, my fights, my losses and traces my emotional footprints through contexts that have constantly challenged my existence and my unwillingness to conform.

As such, my emotional journey has had a constant onward horizon, even when my physical context in this world changed. One where there was a promise of the road less travelled and equally of love and loss, testing my every belief. Though that line of the vanishing point, much like a mirage in a desert, has kept the thirst for this life, parched.

The series, which has evolved over the past few years has seen the shores of the Pacific ocean, the Arabian ocean, as well as the wild landscape of the USA and of that which is native to me, India.

The works from the series are fragmented ensembles of semi-hyperrealistic mirrored montages, impressionistic single stand-alone photographic works and ultra-minimalist iPhonographic mirrored triptychs.

Shibu Arakkal

Monsoon | Twenty Sixteen

Shibu ArakkalFour – Artist’s Note