Label Text:
Yarde situates his vision of destiny and chance on one hundred brightly colored squares, using the organizing grid of the Indian board game Gyan Chauper, adapted in the nineteenth century for British players as Snakes and Ladders, or Kismet. Players progress by rolling the dice. On their quest to achieve the highest spiritual and moral realms, they climb ladders as symbols of virtue and struggle, or slide down snakes, symbols of vice and failure. Yarde complicates the pathways with coded imagery based on dreams and his personal experience of physical vulnerability through illness. He incorporates Braille numbers and letters, and fills half the grid with organic forms that resemble cells.
Acknowledging the fragility of life, Yarde seems to allow for the idea of fate while embracing the existence of both good and evil.
Tags:
snakes; fruit; trees Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2007.12 |
