The Ambi Project
Dear Ambi,
I can’t help but write this letter to you. Let’s just say I’m one of your countless admirers and I’m feeling perplexed as I hold your phantom in my hand. So many questions have at once swarmed my brain that I’m compelled to seek answers.
I’m now familiar with your many names but let me call you by the name I’ve known you. How many times your identity changed! How much you have witnessed! You’ve come a long way, traveling through time and far and wide along the silk routes from East to West.
Ambi, I’ve been thinking of you a lot. You went from Persia, where you were born, to India where you found everlasting soulful romance. They appreciated your sumptuousness and reciprocated with slow, poetic, tender love, care and a delicateness of hand and touch. As elegant as elegance can be, you graced royalty and nobility. But then, in your heyday, you were carried away by rich traders on ships to faraway lands where you found many takers and love of a different kind. You turned into a curvaceous, pretty concubine, dancing with whoever sang of your beauty, promised fame and showed you money. Of course, you were a powerless whore with no say. Your patrons back home were rendered powerless too. Few would say much with a gun pointed to their head. So you did as you were told. They played with you, stylized you as they pleased and your flexibility made you desirable in every form - slender, fat, long, short, stunted, multicolored or grey, all shades and color combinations. You’d hit the big market! Your pimps made so much money! Your fame spread and such was your demand, that you couldn’t meet it all. You had to present yourself everywhere at once - an international celebrity everyone wanted to be seen with! Cheaper, cheesier imitations of you were readily made available to partake in your beauty. You acquired many new names too and now, there was a bit of you for everyone.
How did you handle all the stress and frenzy? Did you lose your spirit when touched by the coldness of steel? Did you give in to the capitalist dream and enjoy the stardom even though it wasn’t on your terms? Did you long for the good ol’ times when life was as simple as a warm human embrace? Did you feel alone in a new world and among all the craze? Was there anyone by your side who really understood you? Did you enjoy this new phase in your life, took things as they came or did you want to break free and return to the ‘homeland’?
As the norm goes, your ominpresence and exhaustion too spelled ‘death’. So things got difficult for you. They didn’t like your curves anymore, calling you ‘degenerate’ and ‘immoral’ and called for death of all ornament. You were too ‘ornate’, overdone and overseen for a modern society. The idea of progress took hold and you were at once backward and old-fashioned. An eastern symbol of nature, eternity and fertility in the time of industrial progress through mechanization. That must’ve been so hard for you! Must’ve felt deeply offensive! How could you belong? As everything foreign and exotic, you too were ultimately cast aside as the ‘other’ to live an obscure life, passively waiting for the next patron, of which there have been only a few.
Although, who would’ve guessed you’ll soon have another stint. You shone once again as an emblem of Rock’n’Roll, with stars like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Prince (who loved you so much he named his record label and studio after you) and the hippies making you a symbol of the ‘Summer of Love’ generation, singing songs of freedom and spirituality, swooning on drugs and psychedelia. Your exotic appeal and intrinsic mystery was once again applauded. You now meant rebellion and even progression!
How ironic! Today, some fashion brands are even dedicated to your flamboyance, richness and ‘over the top’ style. With you, others could get noticed and make a ‘statement’! Ties pointing to penises especially love you - the Indian fertility symbol! Appropriate you say?
You have been classified now as a classic decoration. A true symbol of a global world. They say the secret to your resilience is how you combine conformity with unruliness, blending your rich history with powerful adaptability, and your openness to endless and unexpected reinterpretation. And so, here you are on my toilet paper roll!
Is this your dream or have things gone too far? Haven’t you been silent for too long? Is this a sign of the imminent destruction that we all face by the same callous forces?
Consider this letter a plea. Isn‘t it time you told YOUR story, a story that hasn’t been written by others and claim your rightful place?
May this romance be eternal.
With love.
AMBI-guous, 2023, photograph, artist’s own hair
JAAL, 2023, collage, photograph, toilet paper
DIY, 2023, photograph, hardware tools
Paisley Balls, 2023, drawing