Flood in Chennai, India
My art piece is a three dimensional representation of the trauma of the monsoons. In the art, I have clouds with rain coming down to a jagged ground. However, tormented people are caught and wrapped in the rain in a variety of positions. I imagine them screaming, crying, and wanting to run and hide, but being unable to make the thick sheets of rain end. No matter what they do, they feel helpless, and to me, this is the epitome of trauma.
I chose to create this type of art because the vivid image Anita Ratnam painted truly haunted me. The imagery – “vomit from the skies”, “no ordinary rain” – was terrifying, and I tried my best to capture this sentiment. This piece is meant to portray how trapped the people must have felt during the monsoon, since they had nowhere to turn, and the freeze response that may have ensued within their nervous systems. I have literally wrapped the people in the rain to highlight how strangling and suffocating the rain and flooding was. There is deep emotion in the figures, and I hope that is portrayed through my art representation.
In response to D. G.’s reflections, student K. A. wrote:
There were two aspects of her reflective piece that really gave me a gut wrenching reaction. The actual piece she created with puppet people, wire wrapped and sandwiched between the clouds and base of her project left me feeling a lot of anxiety. Seeing the little figures trapped and unable to be freed, only to be completely covered and at a loss of escaping their torturous fate made me really try to place myself in their shoes and it was very unpleasant. The second part of her expression was the line, “The sky was vomiting rain,” left me with such a strong visual. The use of the word vomit to describe rain was suiting because when one vomits, it’s again, something that’s very out of our bodies control.
