Navin Thomas: the art is a variant

Navin Thomas was born in Madras in 1974. He was educated in cinematography and graphic design and currently works with acoustic ecology and salvaged architecture. The heart is a variant is his first solo exhibition outside India. It invites speculation on the design and sustainability of urban environments such as Singapore and the ‘electronic city’ that is his place of residence, Bangalore.

Thomas discovers the beginnings of his installations and films in and around the discarded detritus of scrapyards, recycling plants and flea markets. He uses ‘rough’ technology to construct his poetic and philosophical art from the salvage of rapidly transforming twenty-first century economies.

Throughout his career, Thomas has experimented with the reverberant and percussive effects of insects, birds, animals and people as they react and co-exist with invisible electronic fields. For the major installation, Long live the new flesh (2014), he takes two powerful modern symbols—targets, literally—and creates between them an unfamiliar ecology dense with sound, memory and sensation.

Navin Thomas won the prestigious ŠKODA Prize for Indian contemporary art in 2011. He has undertaken residencies and participated in group exhibitions in India, Europe and the United States since the mid-2000s. He is represented by GALLERYSKE, New Delhi and Bangalore.