Kāli, the often-misunderstood goddess of time, terror, destruction, and protection, was visualized as a system of performative and sonic tropes equated to Eros.

Weaving together visual art elements with Indian classical dance gestures and theatre, my collaborators and I presented “Through the Kāli Eros,” an installation-based performance project where meanings and boundaries were blurred through pathos and eros.

Against a hypnotic score drawn from Hindustani classical music layered with tones of prolonged echoed narrations in gibberish and live instrumental music, the work interlaced a myriad of haunting gestures and fluctuating movements as acts, interspersed with a film projected on suspended painted surfaces. These performance acts were fragmented in nature and unfolded on cracked mud and dirt ground within the Knockdown Center’s large industrial space. Reflecting on a chapter in the 12th century Sanskrit tome Manasollasà that addresses the compound nature of dance, the work attended to realities of the postcolonial world through a relationship between abstraction and representation.

“Through the Kāli Eros” presented the viewer with a concocted world of its own, where hybrid meanings lead to an inner cleansing mechanism.