In Borrowed Carbon
Whorls of Prophecies
The aim of In Borrowed Carbon is to draw attention to nature's innate and archetypal cycles – the rhythms that write the revolutions of all things alive on this planet.
Modern life's demands for commercial efficiency brings an obsession with time; a fixation with the finite. Our emphasis on urgency has made us think in terms of lifespans over life cycles.
For the sake of efficiency, we tend to see products, political regimes, cultural movements, ideas and lives as singular arcs, each bookended by birth and death.
But through the perspective of natural cycles, we can become aware that a lifetime can be part of a spiralling trajectory – one that can split into inexplicable tangents.
Beyond our obsessions with end-products and deadlines, there are seasonal patterns that show how forests embrace death as nourishment for further growth. There are sequences that reveal how forests need distant deserts to survive.
The images of In Borrowed Carbon are void of humans and the sense of time that they bring to scenes.
The ambiguity and intrigue of a world that isn't governed by human time is furthered by techniques of abstraction in the making of these prints.
This is done through an array of analogue photographs, double exposure images and alternative printing methods that require intuitive brushstrokes of photosensitive emulsions.
Through blending the storytelling medium of photography with these evocative abstraction practices, In Borrowed Carbon furthers the mystique of our fragmented understanding and partial acceptance of nature’s cycles.
Art critic Ashraf Jamal has reviewed this body of work, and it can be read here.
Delta Part 2
Arise, Ascend
Loxodonta
All In One Forest
Nakizra
Foretellings
Cusp
Unseen Depths of Ancestral Homes
Darshan
Night's Altar
Threads of the Sprawl
Delta Part 4
New Shores
Messages From The Infinite
Nightswirl
Sentinel
Nightswirl
Ghost Tree
Flotilla
Brahmanda
Brahmanda is a filmic interpretation of a print with the same name, and is inspired by the Sanskrit idea of the cosmic egg.
In this creation myth, the egg of Brahma the Creator contains the phenomenal world. This piece opens and closes with the image of the print of the egg, the film shows the murky, frenzied beginnings of life, the steady and sequential states of growth, and the alchemical collisions of elements that symbolises rebirth.
The world egg motif appears in Polynesian, Finnish, Dogon, Zoastrian, Yazidi, Phoenician, Egyptian and Taoist myths. The film reinforces its cosmic notion by segueing scenes of stars into the original print, suggesting the rebirth stage of a life cycle.
Brahmanda is a collaboration between Ian McNaught Davis's visuals and footage, and Sarah Hashemian's evocative music. Sarah Hashemian is a French composer and pianist based in London. She studied Music Psychology at Goldsmiths University, as well as Harmony, Composition and Orchestration at the International Conservatory of Paris and in the Juilliard School's extension division. In this piece she blends ambient sound designs and classical orchestration to reflect the movement of the imagery.