We are shaped, often imperceptibly, by the things we use, encounter and experience. Over time, they become extensions of ourselves, serving as both mirrors of who we are and archives of who we have been. If the body carries the memories of lived experience, then the objects that pass through our lives are its scattered, material counterparts. The relationship between person and object is reciprocal: we shape the things we use, even as they shape us.

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My work explores this tension between the body as an archive and the object as a residue. What are the imprints that objects leave upon us? What happens when an object becomes a remnant of a life that is no longer present? These sculptures grew out of an interest in the subtle exchanges between bodies, objects and memory.

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I work with the detritus of life: lost keys, abandoned combs, broken jewellery, and other objects that have outlived their usefulness and been relinquished by their owners. Detached from the lives in which they once held meaning, they now exist in a state of limbo, hinting at the habits and histories of unknown, absent bodies.

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Through the act of collecting, assembling and reconfiguring these forgotten fragments, I attempt to reconstruct the contours of an imagined life. These sculptures are conceived of as embodiments of the human experience. They do not seek to recount specific histories but to evoke the possibility of one. Each is a speculative biography pieced together from material remnants, allowing a new narrative to emerge in the gap between what is known and what can be imagined. From afar, these figures appear to be ancient artefacts from another time. On closer inspection, the illusion of antiquity fractures, and a familiar modern object reveals itself in a frisson of recognition.

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Each sculpture is made from found and discarded objects embedded in a matrix of handmade paper and pulp. I make and texture the paper myself, using it to cover, connect, obscure and reveal the objects. I am drawn to paper for its forgiving and generous properties. Much like memory, paper is fragile, impressionable, holding within its fibres the traces of every touch, fold and pressure, while remaining capable of being reshaped and transformed.

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In bringing these fragments together, I consider how lives persist beyond their immediate presence, dispersed across the objects we leave behind. What appears to be detritus becomes a pathway to memory and imagination, where absence acquires a material form and the mundane is charged with fresh meaning.

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Though each figure inhabits a richly textured life of its own, similar patterns emerge across them, speaking of the ways in which our individual journeys, with all their differences, are held within a larger, shared human experience.

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This exhibition inhabits the space between the seen and the unseen, inviting us to consider the traces we leave upon the world and the imprints the world leaves upon us.

 

Radhika Chadha

November 2026