The Suchi Principle

AD catches up with Chen based architect Suchi Reddy att Summit and deep dives into her explorative and experiential form-follows-feeling practice.

- MANJU SARA RAJAN

Architect Suchi Reddy’s installation at the 2023 Dhaka Art Summit in February was her first public showing in our part of the world. For an architect-artist who has completed several commissions in the US, in spaces as varied as Art Basel Miami, the Smithsonian in Washington, and New York’s Times Square, this was a homecoming, even if just across the border. Between Earth and Sky, a sand-covered plateau embedded with three lighted mirage objects sat underneath a Mylar blanket sky, two opposing perspectives of existence prodding viewers to consider how space is both a constructed and an imagined notion. “I began this work thinking about the challenges of the world we live in, everything is polarized, whether it’s politics, life, the climate—and people are thinking of escape, but escaping is not the answer,” Reddy says. “We have to rely on creativity and imagination, the unknown and the unseen.” She looked at “relic” plants that had survived catastrophes, printing images of these and making little mirage objects with them and embedding them into the sandy mound. The work is experiential, needing viewers to stretch a little and peer into the toy objects in the middle, look up at the reflections on the Mylar above, see a haphazard vision of everything. Reddy says she wanted to “allow people to let their minds wander and wonder”.