Visual artist Saumitra Chandratreya shares this new series of work developed in collaboration with poet Kevin Mooney. “The Secret Language of Intimacy” is part of the Creative Pinellas 2020 Arts Annual Virtual Festival.
“Language is a transcription of a perceived thought, concept, emotion or image. In this installation we have taken the perception of emotions in relationships and transcribed them into not only a poetic form of language but also into the language of abstract artistic images. Both transcriptions are valid interpretations of the same emotions.
“Relationships are non-linear as they flow freely between people. We believe there is a beginning to a relationship but no end because it truly changes and evolves as the people involved age, grow, dream, being positive, negative, comfortable, or not. Relationships come in many forms, which is the degree of intimacy both together, or one alone, choose to create.
“Our work looks at the characteristics of relationships in various stages, through two distinct art forms – Poetic and Abstract. It begins with emotions created by relationships and translated into the poetic form, and, from the poetic form, it is translated into abstract images on fabric panels. The panels are created by printing and/or manipulating various types of fabric to convey the appropriate translation of the emotion created by the reading of the individual poems.
“The installation invites the viewer to take a journey through the labyrinth of emotions depicted on the panels. One poem is represented by one or more panels depending on the ever-evolving and deeper intimacy of a relationship.”
All photos courtesy of HCC’s Gallery 221
