S N O
I T A T N
E M R
FE
ran
Roop
itha esh S
I must admit that deep inside I have long wrestled with the concept of “truth”. As I was provoked, revoked, inspired, embraced and encapsulated by New Media, my struggle with truth was amplified by my constant negotiation with the capital “Art”. Sometimes upholding art as a means of pure access to the soul of humanity, at times deriding art for its assistance in ideological and oppressive endeavors, occasionally retreating from the socio-political world in order to practice “pure art” and inevitably delving head-first into the political struggles every now and then - to mark my existence within the system of value shaped by our modern conditions. It was, for all intents and purposes, a highly virtuosic and skilled form of performance that did not reflect the truth instead created the ideal truth envisioned by the system it operates. This is but one way that art functions on a superficial ideal – a veil permeated with glitter and fame I might acknowledge.
As such, this superficial condition conceals the underlying capitalist system that feeds on the glitziness. Indeed this convinced us (including me at certain times) that Art has the ability of transporting the viewer to an unmediated, unchanging and all consuming space in which universal truth is experienced - an ideological truth of the modernist. It is at this crucial juncture, that I have come to a realisation; Art is not the truth, but it’s just another path of discovery (a framework bestowed/blessed upon me) in the larger realm of my human journey that equips me to look beyond such framework - in finding the TRUTH. Such deep provocation instigates the very nature and operation of New Media that brings new forms of destruction to the strongholds of my worldview (an element of ferment). Through the crumbling of my frameworks, my manifesto in life is to seek and understand my TRUTH - who is Roopesh Sitharan? In my personal endeavours, the search for the truth is filled with struggles, responsibilities, discoveries, mistakes, curiosities, confusions, confinements, glamour, fame, glitter, avariciousness, envy and pitch-blackness. This solo show is a documentation of several paramount moments in my life, over the span of 10 years where the inner struggle of questioning manifests in the form of digital prints, video arts and web work. These manifestations of New Media works are 58