On Cultures Through Collecting, Subrat Kumar Behera, Watercolour, Lithograph and Charcoal, 2018.

I take inspiration from various religious tales, mythological stories, folk tales, and day to day news. The aim of my work is to look at how the process of storytelling works. What the narrator of the story wants to say? What does the narrator not say? What kind of techniques can be used to evoke the various rasas in the viewer's mind?

                   

For this work I am collecting stories of people from around this place. These oral histories have inspired me to incorporate mokulito technique as a part of my work. What stood out in these stories was the idea of how any culture, people, or object as a life cycle – it is conceived, born, exists and eventually dies. The title inspired by James Still’s essay On Collecting Art and Culture too helps express the convoluted understanding of value through the notion of permanence and preservation attached to it.