Lakshita Munjal

I like distorting the conventional elements of our built environment 

I like to confuse you 

I like to capture moments when the city morphs into something other than the structural grid it’s meant to hold. 

I like to compare our anthropometric scale to those of our skyscrapers and our homes 

I like to question the language we’ve created to talk about these structures; the ‘room’ is my recent prey

I like to imagine the city as a lived organism; breathing alongside us, going to work with us in the morning, eating with ‘us’ bit by bit.

I want you to observe how the buildings around you make you feel

I want you to notice how you make a ‘room’ everywhere 

I want you to question the confusion 

My practice begins by either capturing photographs or collecting objects during my daily travels. A part of the city comes back and breathes with me. I attempt to mould it to my rhythm, but usually the contrary happens and our conversations dictate the work. The print medium comes to focus as I like to imagine it as a layer of skin the urban morphology gets to shed, a trace of existence in its current state. Using techniques like imprinting and stamping often surround the process.

While reading about agoraphobia a couple of years ago, my interest in questioning the ‘meaning of spaces’ grew further. It’s a phobia that comes out of our evolutionary response to built structures. A heightened version of the discomfort you feel when you’re in the tube and don’t know where to look, or in a large square under a 50-story high building and can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the weight above you. 

My attempt remains to accumulate these quirks within our environment and observe their phenomenological impact on our daily lives.