Collaborative art project · Installation
At a Comfortable Distance
Justice, state violence and the death penalty—made spatial, material and difficult to keep at arm’s length.
The inquiry
What allows a society to remain distant from the violence carried out in its name?
The project began with the gap between legal certainty, media representation and lived experience. It asks how capital punishment becomes acceptable when procedure, language and physical distance keep its consequences largely unseen.
Site
Freedom Park was once a prison.
The installation occupied Barrack A, across the open beds where prisoners once lay. Presented during Bengaluru Hubba in January 2026, the work connected the building’s carceral past with contemporary questions about punishment.
Project film: the installation, its site and the collaborative process.
The material
The Buxar rope
India’s execution ropes are produced at Buxar Central Jail from thousands of braided cotton threads. The installation uses ordinary cotton rope to refer to that object: soft and familiar, yet associated with state power, hidden labour and fear.
At the top, the ropes are tightly gathered and symmetrical. As they descend, they loosen, tangle and spread. Institutional order gives way to human complexity.
Process and pedagogy
The work was not designed around a predetermined answer.
Over four weeks, students, artists and legal professionals worked through case law, media coverage, wrongful-conviction accounts and prolonged incarceration. The studio became a place for discussion, disagreement and uncertainty. The installation developed from that sustained encounter.
Read about the process and pedagogy →Sound
Calm, persistent and unresolved.
The soundscape layers courtroom language, procedural speech, prison ambience, footsteps, metal, crowds, sirens and silence. It has no fixed beginning or end. Sound is distributed through the space, sometimes close but indistinct, sometimes clear but emotionally flat.
Listen to the sound work →Collaboration
Artists, students and legal researchers worked together.
Created in collaboration with Aastha Chauhan, students of Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, and The Square Circle Clinic at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
View the full project archive →