Savia’s complete absorption in the conceptual frame that she has laid out for herself is evident in the installation entitled Shape-shifting field. This is a site- and context-specific installation whose elements are small white hollow tubes made of paper-clay and are the result of months of ceaseless effort. As the work evolved, the colour and the texture of these elements led Savia to conceive them as bones which also then aligns this work with the artist’s primary concerns. These bones when put together in the installation seem to form abstract images and do not, at first sight, seem in any way ominous. But a more careful look, especially in conjunction with the rest of the elements of the show, brings one back to confront the question of our own mortality. Time is not directly referred to in this work but, at a deeper level, the work is about temporality and the ephemeral nature of human existence.

Written by K Shridhar, Liminal, 2017