Shubigi Rao
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  • Pulp: Vol I
  • Pulp: Vol II
  • Pulp vol. III
  • Films
  • WORKS (2013-2018)
    • 2018. The Wood for the Trees
    • 2017. Written in the Margins
    • 2013. The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul
    • 2013. Useful Fictions
    • OLDER WORKS >
      • 2017 >
        • Every Cabinet is a Library, from the 3rd Pune Biennale
      • 2016 >
        • works from Ghost on the Wire 2
      • 2015 >
        • works from Dear Painter
        • Objects Best Shown to a Stranger
      • 2014 >
        • Visual Snow
      • 2013 >
        • Stabbing at Immortality: Building a Better Jellyfish
        • Blotting the Ledger
      • 2008 >
        • The Tuning Fork of the Mind
        • The River of Ink
  • BOOKS
    • Written in the Margins, 2017
    • Pulp: Vol I. 2016
    • Useful Fictions. 2014
    • History's Malcontents. 2013
    • 4 Pillars: Books from the Echolocation project. 2007-2008
    • No Cover, No Colour. 2006
    • Bastardising Biography: An Extraordinary Initiative. 2006

Blotting the Ledger,
Hand-lettered books and financial books soaked in fountain pen ink
2013
shown as part of OH! Open House Marina Bay 2013
Deutsche Bank, SIngapore

The work consists of books with text and drawings, which are then treated so that most of their content dissolves in the very medium it was created with. The content deals with the bodies of knowledge surrounding banking, finance, speculation and market manipulation.

The books are place settings in the boardroom of a prominent multinational bank in Singapore's Marina Bay business district - suggesting the unpalatable swallowing of uncomfortable facts about cause and effect and consequence.  They are as large as dinner plates, and are as many as there are places at the conference table. I like the quiet joke of setting a dish of burnt-looking books. It suggests data, information and reams of statistics (which is what they trade in and profit from), turning to ashes in their mouths.

Some of the books are soaked with pages inserted from financial gazettes, the Money pages from newspapers and other 'secondary' sources. These leave a sort of ghostly after-image of their text on the ruined books.

(click to enlarge thumbnails)
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