TGLife
A participating artist at Goa Affordable Arts Fest (GAAF) at Museum of Goa (Pilerne) and a self-taught fine arts photographer Payal Kakkar boasts to have spent more than two years photographing 70 plus churches in Goa. Giving a new dimension to architecture in the genre of documentary, her highly detailed and lyrical quality images reveal the true essence of the designs of these magnificent spaces. Kakkar who is exhibiting a unique collection of photographs of the altars of churches of Goa as a part of GAAF 19, offers nine of her images from the collection ‘Sacred Spaces: A moment in Time’ for display (and sale) up to February 14, 2020.
Kakkar’s works evoke an emotional response and creates a ‘moment in time’ where time stood still and the viewer is able to connect with the inner spirituality loosing focus from the chaos around and the regular errands that keep one occupied. She tries to re-creates a moment in which one almost feels like he or she is standing outside of their body. These moments can be very intense and very powerful. “I have tried to create all that I felt being in the presence of these sacred spaces in my moment of time,” says Kakkar whose images showcase her journey through a multi-dimensional world.
“It is an attempt to convey a personal impression of not just what I saw but also of how I felt during the whole process of producing my works,” she says. With her background in Indian Classical dance and her role, environmental protection and dietics, Kakkar has focussed on the practice of photography for the last seven years, having produced bodies of work in France, Italy, Bhutan, Thailand and Cambodia.
In her larger body of work, Kakkar is drawn to architectural spaces having a language and conversation of their own. Her photographs reveal the soul of the structures and the impact of the passage of time as they witness empires grow and fall. While being true to the built environment, Kakkar’s images also reveal an emotional landscape, a psychological dimension that is beyond the stone reality. She is able to enhance the true nature of structure, not only of how it looks but also how it feels to be in its presence.
Her photographic work is shaped by her background as a dancer. She has danced since she was five and with the mind of a dance choreographer, Kakkar looks at the subject through her camera lens like a stage with artists, props and set pieces. In this way, she composes her photographs to tell a story that is about different components in relation to one another and in movement. She tries to create a sense of interaction of different elements in the foreground and background. She plays with a sense of three-dimensional and two-dimensional elements to create a composition that is both abstract and realistic. The resulting image is both an external and internal reality.
Her passion for photography led her to travel the world exploring sacred architectural spaces. Instantly she was drawn to angles, spaces and structures and the stories they tell. Her last exhibition in Goa ‘Ecclesiastical Goa: 16th and 17th Century Churches’ was inaugurated Arch Bishop Filipe Neri Ferrao at The Church of Francis of Assisi, Old Goa in 2018 and she gave a presentation on the same at Goa Art and Literature Festival (GALF) too.
