My School in Angkor

Atul Dodiya visited Angkor as part of a 2005 artist camp featuring 11 artists from India. Taking inspiration for this work from an everyday source - the alphabets on his daughter's t-shirt - Dodiya through abstraction, form and texture, has created a mystic ode evoking the decadence and decay of Cambodia's ancient and more recent past. The sepia and sandstone palette is reminiscent of the monumental stone carvings that surround the site. The Khmer letters, like mantras wafting across the surface, bear runic qualities. The skull, however, remains an ever-present specter, perhaps as a symbol for the murderous carnage of the Pol Pot regime or perhaps as a general metaphor for transience.