WATER (2015)

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In the beginning there was water. Life and stories emerged out of it. In the end there is water. Life and stories go back to it. Such is the promise. In our stories, God, floating on the ancient water sleeps and dreams of us. And we are born. God sends rain for forty days and forty nights so that our rebirths happen. Unrecognized we are sent down the rivers to sad mothers who wait for us. Our deaths are sanctified and washed when a river is called down to our world.

We see water as part of a known, already mapped and quantified geography. We deny its uniqueness; we shy away from giving it a face to remember by. Arnab Ghosal, in his new works, has not picked up large expanse of a waterbed which is indifferent and distant. He has zoomed in his camera to capture a single moment. And in this moment the water looks at you, shifts its glance, turns around and dances a little dance. This is also the moment when we get a glimpse of the warm and throbbing life that it carries within. In one single frame the blue water breaks into a multiplicity of yellow and white as if there are many waters within a single one. Water has many faces. In these works water is kind and intimate. But it is also the primordial element that is capable of creation.   

Water contains the potential for both beginning/life and ending/death each of which contains the seeds of further stories. Arnab has captured these stories that are yet to be told. We will know them only if we listen to the water. His is not the water that we have tamed in transparent bottles lined up in crates. His is not the water that, because of our greed and disrespect, has died lonely deaths under the skyscrapers and shopping malls. His is the water that has surrounded our planet even before the first life form emerged. His is the water that is nurturing and promising. It gives you peace. It gives you silence.