Ashvita’s is pleased to present Mimesis, a compelling new body of work by renowned artist duo Thukral & Tagra, marking the inaugural exhibition at the gallery’s newly launched white cube space in Chennai. Open to visitors until 17 July, the exhibition can be viewed from Tuesday to Saturday between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM by prior appointment, offering audiences an opportunity to engage with a thought-provoking exploration of memory, technology, and contemporary life.
Emerging as both a residue and an extension of the artists’ ongoing series Arboretum, Mimesis continues a contemplative journey through communities of trees, memory, and living archives. While Arboretum focused on organic ecosystems and the interconnectedness of nature, Mimesis shifts the conversation toward digital terrains, investigating how lived experiences are translated into pixels, data bars, and fragmented visual units.
The exhibition features hundreds of painted canvases composed of imagined data forms. Through these works, Thukral & Tagra examine how the speed, abstraction, and complexity of digital systems can be grounded in the slowness, tactility, and materiality of painting. Each canvas becomes a visual record of moments, transformed into coded structures that simultaneously reference data and personal experience.
Reflecting on the project, the artists explain, “We wanted to imagine infinite units, each representing a lived moment. For us, time, data, context, and urgency often become ways of seeing. These unique bars read like data sets, each marking the present, while carrying traces of the practices that have shaped our journey over time.”
As contemporary life increasingly unfolds across online and offline worlds, our experiences are continuously archived, measured, and reshaped through algorithmic systems. In this evolving digital condition, Mimesis raises profound questions about what it means to inhabit realities built through data, repetition, and mediated images. Can pixels become the new atoms of memory and emotion? Can systems of code contain traces of intimacy, absence, surveillance, or care?
The exhibition positions itself at the intersection of technology and human experience. While technological systems thrive on acceleration and efficiency, art continues to insist on reflection, materiality, and presence. Through this tension, Mimesis creates a space where viewers can reconsider how they see, feel, remember, and remain human within increasingly digitized environments.
Initiated in 2022, elements of Mimesis have previously been presented at Nature Morte, New Delhi; the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; Jaipur Centre for Art, Jaipur; and Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery, Mumbai. The Chennai presentation expands upon these earlier iterations, bringing together the project in an ambitious and immersive format.
The exhibition is further accompanied by a studio-signature newsletter featuring a text by writer and curator Chirag Thakkar, offering additional insight into the ideas and processes that inform the work.
More than a reflection on digital culture, Mimesis is an inquiry into how memory, perception, and identity are being reshaped in the twenty-first century. Through its distinctive visual language, the exhibition invites audiences to pause and consider the complex relationship between technology and humanity, reminding us that even within systems of data and code, traces of lived experience continue to endure.
