Priyageetha Dia, Landware, 2022, still from video: 5 min 30 sec. Courtesy NTU Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore.
In many ways, Priyageetha Dia’s practice echoes communications scholar Marshall McLuhan’s golden revelation, The medium is the message (1964). Her argument is embodied in her careful selection of media, such as reflective gold, immersive CGI, or otherwise. She first made national headlines in 2017 for vandalism when she gilded a drab, concrete public staircase in foil. A tactile intervention that draws attention to the everyday spaces stifled by “ever-lifeless” state architecture, Untitled (Golden Staircase) prefigured the artist’s material experiments and foregrounded her later attempts to restore minority agency effaced by imperialist narratives.
