Counting all my saffron

15 years ago
Posted in:2009, Works
0
Author: pranky2go

Various mediums
2009-2011

This series of drawings are made with strands of saffron and tobacco after my journey westwards to Germany in the winter of 2008. My mother had gifted me a box containing one gram saffron. A single thread of saffron along with a glass of warm milk is a perfect substitute to drinking alchohol for keeping oneself warm. In Germany, I noticed fine cut tobacco being used for self rolled cigarettes. The similarity of structure and colour among the two-saffron and tobacco struck me. So did their differences. Using them as symbols to represent the east and west, I have tried to articulate my first impressions of the different cultures in this transitional phase. Different aspects of the plants are hinted in each drawings- the medicinal properties, the smell, the exclusiveness. In some works the threads function as lines and take free shape to depict the assimilation of cultures.

The work began as a series of drawings in a diary, culminating as letters of an unknown alphabet in silkscreen prints on paper. Later, fearing that not much saffron will be left over, I carefully began counting the saffron threads, meditative like counting the beads of a rosary.