for Yabya Kewat, it is concept that precedes the crafting of objects. Kewat spent three years ideating the concept for his installation — Invisible Visible, that was put together at the BVP exhibition this year. Hardcore minimalist Kewat wanted to display how human beings hoard more things than we actually consume.

“Back in the day when this journey began, I was no minimalist. But, then I started cleaning and getting rid of unnecessary stuff. I was spending 16 hours a day trying to tidy things up in my kitchen and my bedroom and I realised that there is so much that we mindlessly accumulate for the offchance what-ifs. This epiphany became the trigger for basing my installation on this concept,” shared Kewat, also a final year fine arts (sculptures) student at BVP, who in the following month went around interviewing people in their everyday lives, busy in their normal routines. “I would arrive at their houses, unannounced, so that they had no chance to tidy their spaces. And then we had eccentric conversations about a forgotten comb behind the curtains or an unpacked shoebox bought ages ago,” she recalled. This exercise not only reaffirmed Kewat his concept but also made him realize that it often takes a third-party perspective to make the invisible, visible and highlight things that we don’t tend to notice in our everyday existence.

Invisible Visible was an amalgamation of random objects — broken cups, a pair of slippers, soil pots and others. Kewat generated symbolism by making wire structures to outline the invisible and thereby making it visible. “I also incorporated audio — I played a 45-minute audio-clip of the incomplete fragments of my conversations with people and that became another symbol. It was about how people successfully got the whole essence despite listening to incomplete fragments,” elaborated Kewat.

Kewat is an environment enthusiast and his artworks often raise uncomfortable questions about our interactions with the environment. Another installation he worked on was called Novel Nature. In this, he experimented with red pieces of cloth to draw people’s attention to unacknowledged definitions of environment.

For Kewat, the invasive nature of art installations is what drives him. He feels that they empower him to intervene and entrust him with a responsibility to better the world.