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Carbon City – A Collection of Wishful Paintings by Mehek Malhotra

Curator and poet: Krishna Kant

CARBON CITY

This collection of works is called Carbon City. Why?

Every painting carries in itself a world powered by machines, inhumane of the feelings, the carbon emissions ruling us all. It’s also the words written beside these artworks that term to give a little insight into them. Using a carbon tape, these words came out of a typewriter, much like the colors coming out of the artist’s imagination.

This Carbon City is a paranoid city. Mehek presents a silent struggle that speaks more than the mute, brightly-lit colors. There is a sense of process in her works. A conduit of wishful thinking, taking shape through colors that retain their individuality, yet fit together to bring that communal feel of something beyond mind and space. One may notice certain ambiguity in understanding the concept behind the art but the texture feels welcoming. You feel the comfort, you seek a piece of yourself in her works. She brings out a side that remains vividly unseen to the naked eye and yet remains within ourselves. Read about her and you shall notice her astute observations from personal experiences taking shape into these works.

carbon city mehek malhotra

There’s paranoia within,
But the surface stands clean.

We have headlined
our stars
and forged our homes.
This city shall never be mine,
Carbon emission can whine,
For I have the whole universe to bind.

Notice those skies,
Those shades of purple never lie.
Burn that yellow,
reach out further still
and call them your own.

She has her ways
to begin again.
Rising from the vortex of eternity.
Bow down
and sing a verse
for, she is the whole universe.

carbon city mehek malhotra

She has love on her mind
and this false paradise shall remind
of things gone
as they farther will.

She falls like the rain
under the charm of new awakenings.
The gravity of love
takes its toll.
She falls like she dies
moments before the light
illumines her insides.

She falls on forgotten wings,
forgotten and not dead.
She has learnt the art
to rise from every fall.

carbon city mehek malhotra

Seek a piece of me,
my love.
I am bound to you all,
in love with you all.

I don’t wonder my reasons.
A strange warmth resides
in every piece
that stays behind
of places ever been
of faces together seen.

My missing pieces serve
my memories of you.

carbon city mehek malhotra

Colour me
in bright red and yellow.
I shall turn them black
like ash
black fur,
and before they fall
before the tips of my fingers
turn it into a habit,
before the rising puffs
come out in circles
and remind of dreams.

I shall dare again.

carbon city mehek malhotra

Turn me into a river,
I fail to flow.
I have the colours of running,
bright and dark.
And I shall carry a shade,
a shade of me in my hair.

I carry a silence in my eye
of travelled cities
and ever-changing window-lights,
loving new strangers
and being one.

About the artist

mehek malhotra

Mehek Malhotra

Sitting beside her window to the purple setting Sun, with her laptop in front of her, sketchbook full of stubs from the torn-off pages, a sense of incompleteness, a cup of coffee, and a turtle that she babysits for her friend, she is ready to paint the world with her hand-made textured art effects, trying to bring to life the wonderful colours of monotony. The looks of her intensity are the result of false judging eyes, for she is the happy art child.

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