Vasudha Thozhur - Diaries, Projects, Pedagogy, 1998-2018

This book is a compilation of texts that were written as a response to different compulsions. As the title indicates, it contains diary entries, seminar papers, catalog essays, and in addition, excerpts from a series of nine books that were part of the outcome of an extended project undertaken between 2002 and 2012. Woven together, as they are, they create a narrative that exceeds the sum of its parts. The practice of painting entails decisions prompted by a belief in the journey as opposed to purely professional constraints. It seems necessary to underscore this in the light of the pragmatism which the culture industry forefronts. Therefore, the author writes, as she paints, to break the skin of the everyday, to create ruptures that provide access to the timeless space and infinite dimensions of a life lived through the practice of art. Diaries and journals record thoughts that are doorways to a kind of becoming that never ceases and are closest to lived experience, to the moment even as it passes, leaving little scope for obfuscation or concealment. They create loops that one can enter any time and still feel a sense of being in the present, and dare say, the truth?