“चटाई”

Title “चटाई”

Medium Woodcut

Size 72” X 48” Inches

Year 2021

Since the pandemic, masks have haunted and frustrated my ability to lip-read is cut off. My mother taught me how to lip read in Hindi, and I recall a memory of learning the technique: “We were sitting on the mat and touching our throats to each other for the vibration.”

Language has many meanings and purposes in the world of communication. That is why there is so much variation when we talk about the language of art, the language of speech (verbal expression), and in my language of “lip reading”. A spoken word is made of alphabets, many of which have similar kinds of pronunciations. So to lip read and get the exact word and the meaning sometimes becomes a difficult proposition, because the visual expressions of some words appear similar. Example – Ma, Pa, Ba, Bha.

There is practical difficulty at times to understand and follow. For me, lip-reading itself is an art and I take this as a challenge to convert my lack of speech into the language of my art.