"My Eyes Burn, But I Keep Staring"

"My Eyes Burn, But I Keep Staring"- 16 A4 size panels of box frames, medium - watercolour, ink, lights, the sound of a cricket (interactive),

The panels, reminiscent of de Chirico’s dreamlike spaces, evoke a sense of timeless alienation. In these works, figures, animals, and architectural fragments inhabit an unsettling stillness. Through layers of mixed media, the narrative explores themes of displacement, mortality, and estrangement. A vulture symbolises inevitability, while animals, ruins, and fragmented bodies illustrate the tension between survival and decay. The stardust is Hope for tomorrow. These visual elements transcend the physical, inviting viewers into a realm that is both deeply personal and universally reflective of humanity’s enduring quest for meaning in fragmented spaces.

The sixteen panels titled "My eyes burn, but I keep staring" convey several recurring themes and emotions through a mix of surreal imagery, stark structural elements, and a sombre colour palette. I return again and again to the feeling of being held inside spaces, physical, psychological, and emotional. The white wireframe rooms, boxes, and cages appear fragile, almost temporary, yet they contain bodies, animals, and actions that feel heavy and inescapable. These structures suggest boundaries I cannot see clearly, but cannot escape either.

Images of death, a coffin marked with a cross, a vulture, and figures lying face down, enter the work without drama. They are not symbols of spectacle, but reminders of fragility, endings, and the constant nearness of loss. Animals such as the cow, horse, and dog are placed in abstract interiors or thresholds, displaced from their natural contexts, mirroring a sense of quiet alienation.

Labour recurs throughout the panels: carrying weight, beating a drum, enduring repetition. These acts reflect persistence more than resistance. Darkness, smoke, and vast voids open behind or ahead of the figures, suggesting uncertainty and the unknown. The title speaks to exhaustion, but also to the refusal of the act of continuing to look, even when looking hurts.

I use mixed media on paper to build a visual language that moves between the tangible and the abstract. This choice allows me to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and quiet tension, where forms appear both present and unstable, inviting questions rather than clear answers.

Throughout the series, I work with a contrast between soft, fluid washes of ink, charcoal, and dark tonal fields and rigid white wireframe structures. Smoke, shadows, and star-like voids suggest a shifting, unknowable world, while the precise linear outlines hint at an invisible but persistent structure of containment. These skeletal rooms and boxes function like mental or emotional blueprints, fragile in appearance, yet unyielding.

By layering recognisable figures, human bodies, a vulture, a horse, and a cow over abstract and geometric spaces, I aim to create a dreamlike state. The scenes do not belong fully to a physical location; they could exist equally within memory, the subconscious, or a cosmic landscape. Large areas of darkness and negative space are active elements in the work, absorbing the figures and leaving room for the viewer’s own interpretations.

The relationship between the figures and their environment is one of quiet endurance. Human figures appear enclosed, burdened, or strained, crawling, carrying weight, standing alone within vast emptiness. These spaces are not shelters but liminal zones that must be navigated.

The cow, a familiar presence from everyday Indian life, appears as a grounding element. Yet I place it on a staircase leading toward a dark, star-filled doorway. At this threshold, the cow becomes more than domestic; it represents patience, continuity, and a subdued hope as life stands facing the unknown.

Across the series, both humans and animals are displaced from natural contexts and placed within constructed, abstract environments. This displacement reflects a sense of alienation, but also an ongoing search for meaning, endurance, and the courage to keep looking, even when the act of seeing becomes painful.