Can you interpret Sumedh Rajendran’s artworks in Water Without Memory?

The show explores time, reality, human conditioning and beliefs.

Artist Sumedh Rajendran’s works are like riddles, with no definite right or wrong. They’re much like those movies, which have an abrupt end. What happens next? What did that scene mean? The possibilities could be endless, much like Rajendran’s installations. He is interested in looking at how our realities are shaped, moulded and created with what happens in social and political life. But none of what he wants to say is presented on a platter.

His show, Water Without Memory, explores time, reality, distance, the way one looks, human conditioning, our belief systems, our culture, history and our surroundings. “The title is not necessarily what it implies. It could be a paradox or something completely different,” says Delhi-based artist, showing in Mumbai after eight years. “It could also refer to water as a carrier of memories and of time and as an object that goes through the inner and outer aspects of human life and the one that can take your shape and purify you.”

It’s for the viewer to see the different forms from different point of views and experience what he or she would like to.

The installation Crossing Frozen Clouds places a curvy track on a block of white marble. A frozen, hardened cube of snow is saturated in time, but its other side, the side that melts carries the hope of moving on.

Glass and grill installation Depth of other Sky talk about space, any space, which is invisible or perhaps unseen and ignored. “Like how we humans are disconnected in the connected world or how we depart on a journey and not really reach anywhere,” says Rajendran.