In Pāli, Sankhārā means formations or volitional formations, especially with regard to mental processes. In other words ‘things which have been put together in our minds’.

From the time we are born, every living moment is spent on creating layers and layers of thoughts and memories in our minds. At times we are aware of these but mostly we are not. This collection of sculptures is an attempt to capture this intangible and illusive concept and present it in a somewhat visually apparent manner.

The simplified, minimal, abstracted human figure represents ‘life, as we know it’: how we spend our lives in pursuit of contentment, although we are hardly ever truly content. We adorn ourselves with accolades and achievements, one after the other, but more often than not, we are unable to discover true peace. The decorated, ‘adorned’ figure is a representation of this undeniable human condition.

The figure is integrated with an abstracted vessel, which indicates the formations of our minds. These vessels, though seemingly solid or concrete, contain nothing but emptiness. Often when we peel off the layers of our thought processes, what we discover is only emptiness or nothingness.

It is this reality that I endeavor to present, maybe vaguely, with this collection.