Architecture of Pain by Uday Dhar

This series of work was developed in 2019, and was my attempt to come to terms with a mysterious ailment that afflicted me starting in February 2018. Over the course of the year, I had to undergo various invasive medical procedures, and was admitted to hospital twice with near-death situations. Even now, the doctors cannot decide the cause of my condition. I could not help but see a parallel between my condition and the societal change in America since the election of Trump. As an immigrant, it feels visceral and deeply demoralizing. As if a poison is coursing through large segments of the population, and we, as a result, are ill. The societal issue goes to the heart of the question—how do we define what is the United States and how do we talk about who is American? It is an existential pain, as I love this country. This experience for me as an immigrant in the present correlates in my mind to my illness. In fact, I reread Susan Sontag’s essay Illness as Metaphor.

The drawings refer to the psychopathology of Munchausen by proxy. They are my reaction to events here in America, but also apply to other places such as Italy, Hungary, Germany, and Great Britain, where the demonization and vilification of immigrants fits the description of Munchausen by proxy—all places that I have visited and where I have had wonderful experiences. Now entire populations have been made to believe that the society they live in is diseased and ill. Given what I experienced in 2018, I cannot help but link the two events. Psychological pain has been compounded with physical pain.

The drawing displays the marks of its making as a representation of pain. The techniques employed include cutting, abrasion, burning, ecorche, collaged fragments of debris, and suturing with thread.

Uday Dhar is a South Asian immigrant who was born in Britain and spent his childhood in India. He has lived in the United States since 1971, and studied architecture at Columbia University, where he graduated with a M.Arch degree. He has worked in New York and lived and worked as an architect in Berlin from 1991–1994, where he began painting seriously. He received a Pollock Krasner grant in 2006, and has exhibited widely starting with New York and Berlin, but also in Bali, Indonesia; Delhi and Mumbai, India; and Budapest. His art practice was interrupted in 2018 due to a mysterious illness that still has not been diagnosed with full understanding. He resumed painting in 2019.