This project remains incomplete; Fulbright grants were unexpectedly terminated in March 2020 due to the global onset of COVID-19. This write-up focuses on sharing the project's initial research and background ideas.

 

Jali Screens of Northern India: Investigating a Sculptural Framework for Perception was the title for my Fulbright-Nehru project researching the Jali screen’s sculptural significance as an object that focuses the viewer’s awareness on the act of looking. This project was to be a hybrid research/creative project, the initial research forming the springboard and reference for a new series of sculptures examining how we frame the act of “looking” toward someone or someplace today.

 

The Jali (also written Jaali) screen is a perforated stone panel of geometric or calligraphic patterning used across the Middle East and South Asia. Most commonly situated in the exterior wall of a building, these screens have a direct effect on the building’s interior environment by reducing glare, mitigating heat, and increasing airflow. The historic examples found in Northern India show the vast range of applications for the screen, from functional climate control to delineation of conceptual threshold.  I was looking at historic Jali screens through three distinct lenses: The Jali screen as a functional device for climate control; The Jali screen as a boundary/delineation between public and private, male and female, and conceptual thresholds; The Jali screen as a material object designed to heighten the viewers' awareness of the space beyond the material object.

 

All three of the above interpretations of the Jali screen are significant to my definition of sculpture as an experience where intention, environment, and material coalesce in one form to produce an understanding of an immaterial concept in the viewer's mind. The Jali screen’s capacity to represent both a physical structure and a conceptual demarcation allows it to draw our attention to the act of looking. Architectural historian Dianne Harris explains the Jali screen's effects: “One looks at the screen, which appears first as a material object, and then beyond it as it disappears from sight. The critical separation between the eyes that see and the object that is seen is made tangible by the screen. It teases the eye, making the viewer pause and in that moment of hesitation, become aware of the very act of looking. The screen, then, is the embodiment of vision: it gives the visual field a membrane and material presence.” (Sights Unseen,155) The Jali screen’s sculptural significance, in other words, is that it gives material form to the act of looking. This capacity is intrinsically tied to – and not separate from – its functionality and architectural placement.

 

The design objective for my Fulbright-Nehru sculptural series was to address a material object's ability to encourage the viewer to become aware of, and question, an abstract idea: how do screens of all types – including the screen on which you are reading this – transform our understanding of the world beyond their borders? By creating objects that bring attention to the concepts of boundary, framing, access, and display, this series would look to the historical precedence in the Jali screen in activating, altering, framing, and focusing on the somatic experience of the viewer.