Nisha Duggal
Machine
About the artist
Nisha Duggal is an artist working across disciplines. Having based her practice in Newcastle upon Tyne she recently moved to London to complete her training on the MFA course at The Slade School of Fine Art. Recent projects have included exhibitions at Ginza Art Lab (Tokyo), Verkligheten (Umea, Sweden), Oriel Mostyn Gallery (Wales), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead) and commissions from Site Gallery (Sheffield) and CAFKA (Kitchener, Canada). Influenced by mimetics and theories of cultural evolution she looks at how people interact with each other and how these interactions relate to our inner lives: 'I am interested in misrepresentation – in the gap between intention and understanding. By finding correspondences between apparently disparate parts of life I aim to facilitate an intuition through the fugue. I try to make the complicated simple.' www.nishaduggal.co.uk.
About the work
Machine investigates the interactions between two subjects: the artist and a female of similar age. Fifty-four screens are used, each displaying an image of its subject in isolation. Although they never look directly at each other, their actions correspond throughout the work via a 'copying mechanism' familiar to the viewer. Machine was created to be played in a loop – the exhibition copy contains an additional reflected version of the work that cycles with the online film. The repeated nature of Machine reflects on repetition in life and the multiplicity of our actions. It evokes thoughts about the advancement of technology, and the place of humanity within. Depending on the scale it is viewed at the work appears either 'game-like' or intimidating. There is an uncertainty as to who is being observed – the viewer or the two women in the film.
