Ascension - Limited Edition of 1 Photograph

Colombo: Sri Lanka. January 2020 After a disastrous lunch involving a crab, a misunderstanding and a bib, I fled the scene. Scuttling from the restaurant, I ducked through four lanes of road-rage, and, red-faced, made it to the anonymity, stray dogs and shade of Viharamadevi Park. After some panting, introspection and attempts at self-redemption, I crossed the road and strode toward Colombo's 'Natural History Museum'. The following morning, trying to make sense of my experience, I read the following missive from a disgruntled tourist on Trip Advisor: "The Natural History Museum next to the National Museum is not worth the admission fee of Rs. 300. Inside it is very dark, the taxidermy is amateurish, the murals are poorly done, fading and the scientific names are out of date. In addition I was ripped off by the ticket seller when I purchased my ticket to the Museum." If I'd been forewarned? I would have gone anyway. So, after being ripped off by the ticket seller, I wandered through the dim corridors, not caring about anything but wedging a fat chunk of time and space between myself and the Great Crab Disaster of 2020. It was then that I saw it. A Sri-Lankan frog, THIS Sri Lankan frog, preserved in formaldehyde: – blue, eerie and seemingly ‘swimming’ forever upward. I whipped out my camera and nabbed a snap. The image felt reminiscent of religious iconography. Floaty. Other-worldly. Venerable. It could have been one of the ‘Stations of the Cross’ or part of some other arbitrary, religious, pictorial narrative… depending on the temporal spiritual stamp or 'meaning' that we/they/us have chosen to imbue things with. Hmmmmm... In many cultures, languages and ideologies, the term ‘ascension’ has been (and still is), semantically loaded. ‘Ascension’: often associated with the transmogrification of spirit, in an upward movement. I could feel a bar-brawl brewing in my brain - over the subtle linguistic differences between the verb/infinitive: ‘to ascend’ and it’s dramatic cousin of a noun: ‘The Ascension‘. Inanimate objects such as aeroplanes, balloons and elevators just (plain-old) ‘ascend’. At the time, I was rooting for the underdog verb …wanting to reclaim the term ‘ascension’ and offer it to this hallowed frog-in-perpetuity… so, I bought the noun a drink, ambushed her humble 'active' cousin and together, arms linked, we set out to paint the town puce. Clinking glasses and toasting through the night, we tossed around notions of sentience, servitude and semantics. When the sun came up, it found us (the human and associated conceptual morphologies), sprawled, spent and chortling under trees in the Cinnamon Gardens. There were two things that we, (the noun, the verb and me) settled on: 1. Yes, I really DID fuck up with the whole crab incident. 2. That the dude traditionally associated with ‘The Ascension’? He'd be totally cool sharing the term with a Sri Lankan frog. Word.

Photography:Digital on Other

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:12 W x 18 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.