Equinox

Cutouts, animation, video loop

Part of ‘The Great Bare Mat & Constellation’, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2013) and Untimely Calendar, NGMA, New Delhi (2014)

A carnival: an autumnal solstice celebration of all that is animate and alive. Horses lose their heads, fish leave their shadows, Diana, the goddess of the hunt is in pursuit of roaring lions and worried dogs and stolid cattle and merry birds and golden dragons.

Equinox is made by Raqs in response to the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The video plays on the sense of the night coming alive with animal forms, and echoes their experience during a flashlight tour of the museum where they sensed the animatedness of the museum’s collection in a very particular way. The animal figures in this video draw from details and objects within the museum’s collection, including paintings, textiles, prints, drawings and sculpture, and from a set of Japanese fables for children printed in the late nineteenth century.