Rann Walk Ocean and Breathings
Jayasinhji Jhala

Rann Walk Ocean

Rann Walk Ocean is one example of an ongoing series of video paintings by Bapa and Liluye Jhala. The VPs are anchored in the idea of the magical mundane. Particular, daily, seasonal, cyclical, episodic, and millennial events occur in all ecologies and environments. All living things domesticate them even as they impregnate them. More importantly, they celebrate them. These environments are mirrored in the habits and patterns of the imagined possible: between species and between humans. The magical mundane is a phrase for the normal that offers surprise to the alien.

An ethno-surreal response evokes experience through memory of the fragment, of immensity through the momentary. The quirky, improbable, unexpected imagined. It suggests relationships and interdependence without demonstration. Communication occurs through transduction, by travel along tangents, and is palpable if it resonates with the viewer. Explanation is not attempted, suggestion births inquiry.

Breathings

Trained as a gemologist, filmmaker and anthropologist Bapa Jhala assembles a mobile sculpture called ‘Breathings’ that are composed of feathers, quills, shells, seeds, gemstones and other organic and found materials. The mobility and velocity comes from air volumes being moved by the moments of persons in confined spaces. Longevity of motion is sustained by the continuum of gravity. Movement makes the invisible visible. The association of obits and stillness with meditative practices confers the idea that dynamic action resides in perceived inaction.

Biography

Bapa Jhala is a visual anthropologist at Temple University. Trained as a gemologist, filmmaker and anthropologist Bapa Jhala assembles mobile sculptures from organic materials, makes ethnographic and ‘other’ films and jewels where the process of inclosing mineral in metal is reversed and jade and quartz and other gem materials are embedded with other minerals and metals.

link: www.temple.edu/anthro/jhala/index.html