Transformative/Anastomosing-architecture
The Empty Chair (wip)
"The Empty Chair" explores how materials carry the weight of colonial transition and resistance. An orthogonal chair slowly collapses from rigid lines into oblique planes, embodying a shift from one cultural system into the next.
The work reflects my investigation into paper as revolutionary medium. During Indian colonial rule, revolutionaries used cyclostyled sheets and pamphlets for underground communication, transforming official hierarchical discourse into something clandestine. They folded messages into hidden forms, communicated through coded systems, and used handmade papers that could destroy evidence.
The collapsing chair mirrors this material rebellion—rigid forms cannot hold, and something fluid and adaptive emerges. Like oblique function's destabilization of architectural certainty, the work investigates how materials remember historical transitions, how making (or unmaking) becomes embodied knowledge about power and resistance.
My practice asks: how do materials carry revolutionary memory? How does collapse become historical testimony?