Video & Media art
This video explores the associations we make between names, images, and places. The visual composition focuses on photographs of the artist’s two grandmothers when they were young, and images suggesting her grandmothers’ names - Rose and Meenakshi, meaning fisheye. The artist’s name, Rekha, which literally means straight line, has also been incorporated. The name Rekha holds a variety of figurative meanings, one of them being “ray of light”. A Rose, a Fisheye, and a Line engages the symbols of these names, creating plastic interplay between the images of a rose, fisheye, lines, and light.
This piece aims to subvert the traditional representation of linage, which is often represented at patrilineal and unidirectional, instead presenting female relatives and demonstrating multi-directional familial connections. Further to this, A Rose, a Fisheye, and a Line focuses on the women’s given names, in contrast to the women’s surnames (maiden and married), which were either passed down by their fathers or given to them by their husbands. Although her maternal and paternal grandparents never had the chance to meet before they passed away, separated by cultural and geographical distances, Ramachandran attempts to connect them in the present day.