Paper Trail: 'Partition of India' - 1947

J Whatman, Mould-made Paper; Silk Thread; Microcrystalline Wax Appletye's ‘Paper Trail’ explores the ongoing importance of paper today. https://appletye.org/paper-trail/ 100 pieces of heritage paper spanning over 100 years, given to 100 artists to create a piece of work. Each piece of paper represents a year. Appletye invited selected artists to create a work in response to something that happened during that year. Exhibition at Maidstone Museum 28th March - 27th September 2020 I have used the small piece of paper to suggest the ‘Act’ (of Partition) as a scroll. The use of red silk thread ‘nods’ towards the binding ties of scrolled documents: the ‘red tape’, and also refers to the new boundary lines imposed on maps: the ‘red lines’. The scroll has been slashed into two parts (partition) and within is a mess of ‘bloody’ red entwined, over and over itself in a continuing web, reminding us of the hostility and violence, starting before Partition but which continues to this day. The whole piece, apart from one ‘overflowing’ thread, is ‘trapped’ in this state using microcrystalline wax.