Let's Play War

Artwork Statement
Let’s Play War begins with my childhood memories of watching images of the Gulf War on TV alongside the battles of B. R. Chopra’s famous televised adaptation of the epic Mahabharata in India. The magically multiplying arrows flying across the screen of the epic drama were a quintessential part of growing up in India in the 90s, while houses in the Gulf blowing up was equally novel for me as a child, and these different worlds sat together on the same screen, their soldiers becoming figures in an imagined game.

The work unfolds through a conversation between a six-year-old brother and his ten-year-old elder sister as they re-enact TV wars at home. Continuing from the series Chhordi—My Elder Sister (2025), this dialogue between the young siblings spans toy weapons, broken houses, mothers’ scolding's, mythological heroes and the ordinary rules of childhood. They do not fully understand the wars they imitate; they borrow what they have seen and make their own rules. Small questions and misunderstandings allow the distance between play and real violence to emerge without resolving it.

Embroidered drawing and text on six - part photographic print of my dilapidated childhood house, ravaged by time and within whose walls these conversations echo, recreate my memories. Rather than offering a direct statement about war, Let’s Play War stays close to the logic of children at play. Its questions remain open: what children learn when they imitate the world of adults, and what happens when the game ends?