Armand Shabbir Muchhala
Shelter
In this consumer-driven world it's hard to maintain or stay true to oneself. Human beings are social creatures by nature and tend to move with the crowd. The way we dress, talk, and communicate is often dictated by social media and what’s trendy. This project explores my need to suppress myself, due to fear of exclusion or lack of acceptance. In these still-life images I have painted various fruits with a uniform and colorless paint to represent conformity. I have been thinking about the ways I have felt pressure to conform and disguise my true self whether it be religion, social class, or even something superficial like fashion. In each image, a part of the fruits reveals their own colors and is liberated from all constraints of conformity.
In this series, I’m trying to convey that everyone has something within them that wants to come out or wants to transcend. So when I cut into the fruit, vegetables, I want to reveal their true selves to the rest of the world. For me, the colored inner part of the fruit shows my personality traits, my creativeness, my VOICE that’s waiting to be discovered, or waiting to be shown to the world. I believe many of us have different ideas we want to share but are concealing due to fear. In these images, I'm creating space for the viewer to focus on what is inside.
