Amitabh Kumar
Five Flags of the Black Sun - III, 2023
Iridescent ink hand embellished on silk screen print on 450gsm archival cotton rag paper
61 x 61 cm | 24 x 24 in
Edition 1 of 5
Copyright The Artist
The Kapaal Ghantu project is a series of horror-comedy comic books situated in and around Amitabh Kumar’s hometown of Mussoorie and the farther reaches of the Garhwal region in the...
The Kapaal Ghantu project is a series of horror-comedy comic books situated in and around Amitabh Kumar’s hometown of Mussoorie and the farther reaches of the Garhwal region in the Himalayas.
The current sequence of images explore the world of Kapaal Ghantu and set the scenography for adventures to unfold. It draws upon legends, myths and rumours that Kumar grew up with. It's a satire borne out of the ecological crisis ignored by a studious blind eye, where an absurd premise finally culminates into a gory battle between the spiritual tourism economy and the tech-enabled singularity vision.
Written in Hindi, the story that the current set of images respond to are :
कुछ देर बाद आपकी आंखें को
अंधेरे की आदत हो जाती है
और आप समझ जातेहैकी
ये अधंकार है, मैं अंधा नहीं हूं
The artworks are responding to a moment of transition for the protagonist/viewer, where the eye adjusts to changing luminous situations and slowly the world of the Kapaal Ghantu is revealed.
The current sequence of images explore the world of Kapaal Ghantu and set the scenography for adventures to unfold. It draws upon legends, myths and rumours that Kumar grew up with. It's a satire borne out of the ecological crisis ignored by a studious blind eye, where an absurd premise finally culminates into a gory battle between the spiritual tourism economy and the tech-enabled singularity vision.
Written in Hindi, the story that the current set of images respond to are :
कुछ देर बाद आपकी आंखें को
अंधेरे की आदत हो जाती है
और आप समझ जातेहैकी
ये अधंकार है, मैं अंधा नहीं हूं
The artworks are responding to a moment of transition for the protagonist/viewer, where the eye adjusts to changing luminous situations and slowly the world of the Kapaal Ghantu is revealed.