Priyageetha Dia
Rite of the time teller, 2021
Moving Image: Single-channel on screen
16.9 format, colour and sound, 3 min 36 sec
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Copyright The Artist
Further images
Using a collection of imagery to formulate a digital archive for the future, Rite of the Time Teller is an introspection of gestures and practices passed down through ancestral, everyday rituals within the Tamizh household. Existing between fiction and nonfiction, autobiography, documentary and documentation, subject and object, the moving image installation reimagines the repositories of connecting collective existence accumulated through Tamizh ancestral practices of knowing and being within the Southeast Asian diaspora.
The central figure is symbolic of a contemporary, mythological presentation of celestial divinities found in Hindu mythology, demonstrating the uncanny contemplation of time through the imagery of the past and the present and the birth of the future cradled in an infant-like form. The tangible material in the ringing of the bell, the extension of the nails, and the gesture of the hands mirror the fluidity of spatial temporality of the living archive on screen and in the physical installation.
Using a collection of imagery to formulate a digital archive for the future, Rite of the Time Teller is an introspection of gestures and practices passed down through ancestral, everyday rituals within the Tamizh household. Existing between fiction and nonfiction, autobiography, documentary and documentation, subject and object, the moving image installation reimagines the repositories of connecting collective existence accumulated through Tamizh ancestral practices of knowing and being within the Southeast Asian diaspora.
The central figure is symbolic of a contemporary, mythological presentation of celestial divinities found in Hindu mythology, demonstrating the uncanny contemplation of time through the imagery of the past and the present and the birth of the future cradled in an infant-like form. The tangible material in the ringing of the bell, the extension of the nails, and the gesture of the hands mirror the fluidity of spatial temporality of the living archive on screen and in the physical installation.
The central figure is symbolic of a contemporary, mythological presentation of celestial divinities found in Hindu mythology, demonstrating the uncanny contemplation of time through the imagery of the past and the present and the birth of the future cradled in an infant-like form. The tangible material in the ringing of the bell, the extension of the nails, and the gesture of the hands mirror the fluidity of spatial temporality of the living archive on screen and in the physical installation.
Exhibitions
Presented as part of Between the Living and the Archive exhibition (9 March - 28 March 2021). Curated by Fajrina Razak and Syaheedah Iskandar. Gillman Barracks, Singapore.