Naturally, I’ve been thinking about the topics of this series throughout my whole life. In 2017, I made an illustration with ink/watercolor on paper that I repeated and had floating on a solid plane in implied perpetuity. It was about a woman who had let religion and tradition bind her to a state from which she could never evolve, never learn anything new. Shocking reveal: I'm an artist who made art about their mother. That illustration spawned the idea for the entire series (part 2 in particular). In the last few decades, I’ve felt so many layers of hurt dealing with the people that, theoretically, I relate to the most. Now that I’m far enough removed from the instances that inspired me here, I wanted to make something that roasts so much of what I’ve observed among Desis in my time on this Earth. “Utopia” covers thoughts I’ve had about some of my fellow Desis (#notalldesis), young and old, with observations from my childhood in Bangladesh to the last decade in NYC.
And speaking of Earth, I wanted to make the Desis out of clay as a nod to the potential for humanity within us even for those that have spent the entirety of their lives being total dicks. And I wanted to juxtapose an ancient material with modern, glaringly bright signage so the message comes out loud and without mercy because I never feel like mincing my words these days. I started every piece here with a hastily drawn sketch. Then I molded the clay to match, had it fired, glazed it, anxiously took it home on the subway, shot it on a makeshift mini blue screen or green screen setup, and then used a mix of After Effects and Premiere Pro to put the 10-second looped videos altogether. I took pottery for the first time in the fall of 2021 and I'm glad I did because not only did this turn out to be the perfect medium but it's been a joy making these little pieces that are about as fragile and as tricky to work with as we are.