Na-Bam (Measure Without Measure)
Shown at: Khoj Studios, New Delhi (2024) | Le Commun, Geneva (2024) | Wellcome, London (2025) (Forthcoming)

Video Installation with screens, Video Wallpaper

Everything alive thirsts.  How to calibrate this, how to measure deluge?

Na-Bam unfolds as meditation on water, depth, and the impossibility of measure. Presented as a six-screen video installation with video wallpaper, the work moves through shifting landscapes of land, river, sea, and forest—charting the imprints of thirst, flood, and memory.

Fishermen describe ‘na-bam‘ as places where the bamboo measuring stick ‘bam’ fails to touch the bottom, where depth of the water cannot be gauged. Raqs brings this phrase into focus, not just as a description of depth, but as a way of thinking: how do we ascertain what exceeds our grasp? What happens when there is both too much and not enough, when floods overwhelm, yet thirst remains?

Step-wells hold the memory of scarcity. Forests and farms mourn the excess. River-goddesses, once storytellers of rhythm and renewal, stand witness to new, unstable cycles. Na-Bam dwells in these contradictions: sacred and profane. It invites viewers into a space where the usual measures fall short, and where water becomes both presence and absence—felt, remembered, and yet measures without measure.