Departure: Shailesh BR

Departure reflects on the moment of pause before migration — the threshold where bodies, human and non-human, weigh the necessity of leaving one ground for another. It considers the fragile negotiations of survival, where movement is less a choice than a compulsion, shaped by depletion, scarcity, and environmental shifts.

Through a series of mixed-media works, animal figures are shown at this point of suspension, bound to move yet tethered to what they leave behind. The imagery stages both the urgency of survival and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Accompanying these works are Philosopher’s Machines — kinetic devices engaged in continuous debate. They generate fragments of thought on the conditions of departure, its causes and consequences, but never reach resolution. Their ceaseless circulation of unfinished arguments mirrors the paradox of our time: an abundance of discourse about displacement and ecological crisis, yet an absence of decisive response.

Together, the collages and machines form an environment where the body and the word, the animal and the philosopher, coexist in states of restlessness and suspension. Departure becomes less a narrative of arrival than an inquiry into the thresholds we inhabit — the uneasy spaces where movement, survival, and thought remain unresolved.

This project is realised by the support of Public Art Trust India in collaboration with IIT Jodhpur Vadehra Art Gallery. The software for creating the interactive machine is funded and created by SignDesk, Bengaluru