When I think about the state of being, and what it means to “be,” a physical state doesn’t make me feel at home. For many, “home” is a feeling that we’re constantly trying to reach. “Home” is something that I explored through Scattered Spirits in a way that caught me off guard. Trying to put feelings into projects, into words and into visuals is a special challenge when your sense of home, self and being have always been a mystery - visiting me in my dreams often.
Conversations that I hold with family members, other people of color and with myself are spaces that I enter with a deep sense of gratitude. These spaces are truly a matter of the spirit, and when we meet with another being in such a space, we learn from these spaces, it changes us. I have been changed.
ABOUT THIS ARTIST
PRIYA CHOUDHURI
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
Priya Choudhuri (they/them) is a queer/non-binary, Indian, multidisciplinary artist who moves between mediums to express their changeable thought and feel. Priya explores themes of existence, absurdity, the spirit and the body through poetry, metalwork, sculpture, sound creation, tattoo and other forms of 2-D and 3-D visual arts that provide a vessel for discovery. Critical dialogue & inquiry is integral to their work. Their work aims to create a bridge between introspection and community, offering thought provoking interaction.
Through this project, I held conversations with distant family members whom I had never spoken with before. We spoke of death, witchcraft, oppression, denial, darkness, liberation and being alive. Coming alive. Coming alive is not a privilege, but a rite of passage that some are denied, but as we spoke about the stories of family, Indian society, ourselves, I felt the reaffirmed of the fact that coming alive, being alive and wanting to see others alive is a way of being as well - a commitment. “Home” for me is subjective, and conversations that occur with others and within my own body live on through these explorations.
At the end of the day, the product of these explorations holds the significance of sharing with others a tiny fraction that I can muster up what I feel inside through the vessel of a visual, auditory or bodily experience. I am alive among my queer family, whether they live within a physical bodies at this moment or not.
