My work uses prints, drawings, paintings and short films to look at the human conditions of loss, suffering, exile, death, memory, and the past. Art for me is a way to explore questions that cannot be answered. Questions like “what is death? Is human nature good or evil? Why is there such suffering? what is fate?”
A work of art should contain more than one idea. For instance, the beauty of colour in an image may draw a viewer in, while the horrible subject pushes them away. A horrible image may be initially taken as something beautiful. An event in real life, and the depiction of such an event in art are quite different. These are two separate realms of experience. It is up to each viewer to experience it for themselves, or not. It is not the artist’s business to tell them what to think, or what response to have.
I have three ongoing bodies of work. One is inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The second is on mammal skeletons, both modern and prehistoric. The third is about human rights, mainly the issue of lynching.
Each print seems to me like a page torn from a novel, in which the viewer can imagine what came before and after. Drawing is a way of thinking, discovering and feeling, so these works are primarily drawing based. –Artist Statement, Krittika Ramanujan
