Fateline (Dhanrekha)

An outstretched palm, saturated in a heated orange glow, becomes both stage and witness—its creases reading like topographic lines of lived experience against a void-black surround. Nestled within the hand, a fragment of currency bearing a statesman’s profile turns portrait into talisman, suggesting how ideals and authority are often literally “held” and carried through everyday bodies. The stark contrast between tender skin and crisp printed engraving sharpens the tension between intimacy and institution, as if the human gesture of offering is complicated by the weight of commerce and memory. In this quiet, confrontational stillness, the work asks whether what we grasp is protection, possession, or the residue of history pressed into our touch.