Dtale Archist V - Mimesis | 2025
June 13th, 2025
Gallery DTALE ARCHIST, Bengaluru
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ARCHIST V is to accept and engage with new urgent inventions. Invite you to play with a plethora of perspectives and forge new paths amidst our communities new ways of seeing and being.
Mimesis
Mimesis emerges as a residue and extension of Thukral and Tagra’s recent series, Arboretum—a contemplative journey through communities of trees. Like seedlings, these fragmented canvases, composed of coloured pixels, embark on an infinite journey, visualising data as an artistic endeavour. For Thukral and Tagra, it is the fascination with data collection amidst high-speed algorithms that finds grounding in the materiality of painting. “We wanted to imagine infinite units—as we often think of a collection in terms of date, time, artwork, and audiences. We see these unique bars as data sets, each reflecting the enormity of practices, ideas, and materials that have shaped our journey over the years.” Living across online and offline realms, our lived moments are increasingly translated into data sets, shaped by algorithm-based rituals. Yet within this seamless sync, we often find space for contemplation. As technology thrives on speed and art on slowness, Mimesis explores the tension between these opposing orientations—offering a moment to pause, reflect, and recalibrate.
PLAY-PRAY
These works come from the series PLAY PRAY, where Thukral and Tagra explore the idea of play through political, psychological, and ritualistic practices. These ephemeral studies arise from a deep, almost instinctive urge—to mod the table tennis table, transforming it from a surface of competition into a space for reflection, negotiation, and possibility.
The resulting figures—drawn, collaged, or constructed—are fleeting yet potent. They act as passing apparitions, embodying states of vulnerability, resistance, or transcendence. Neither fixed nor fully formed, they invite viewers into a momentary encounter, where gesture becomes message and form becomes a means of care. These studies resist permanence, echoing the impermanence of ritual and the unpredictability of play itself.