taruna khatri
EDUCATION
Work EXPERIENCE
Bachelor of Architecture | 2020
Writing Intern India Lost and Found April 2021 - Present
Institute of Architecture and Planning, Nirma university, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. High School | 2015 Sanskar International School, Jodhpur, Rajasthan
Research Assistant To Academician and Researcher Ar. Supriya Kukreja July 2020- Jan 2021
INTERESTS
SKILLS
Architecture Intern Kumar La Noce Jan 2019-July 2019
Software:
Publication/features
Plot no. 1, Ram nagar Industrial Area, Salwas Road, Jodhpur, Rajasthan
Writing Reading Illustrating Filmmaking Photography
Art&Found
Find me and my works at:
languages
Photoshop Illustrator Autocad Sketchup In-design Microsoft Office
8980451638 taruna4197@gmail.com
Hindi (Fluent) English (Fluent) Gujarati (Intermediate)
Others: Writing Drawing Sketching Painting Photography Videography Hand-modelling
Featured Illustration “A Sunday kind of Self-love” for Covid-19 relief funds Sadaneera 3 poems translated to Hindi by Lata Khatri WORKSHOPS Writing/s in Architecture: by Apoorva Bose Dutta Jan 2021 - Feb 2021
About
Index Hi!
1. PHOTOGRAPHY
I am Taruna, an architect, writer and illustrator based in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. I am a self-disciplined, independent thinker of a perceptive nature with a keen interest in history, culture, art, literature, philosophy and human nature.
My work is mainly focused on mental health and personal philosophical ramblings. I aspire to study filmmaking to create narratives that reflect human absuridty, morality and hypocrisy. I am also inclined to work against social stigma and oppression.
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2. VIDEOGRAPHY Page 10-11
3. HALF.ARTED
(Cartoons, Illustrations, Animation)
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4. WRITING Page 26-27
Photography Pictures captured during architecture school and others. View more here and here
Girl undoing braid at Vanakabara, Diu, Gujarat. 4
Curatain Auroras in a sleeper bus
Navratri faces, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 5
Meloncholy Monk at Punakha Dzong, Punakha, Bhutan
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Man flinging bird food at Pushkaer, Rajasthan
Potrait of a woman at Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh 7
// Sabarmati Ashram | Ahmedabad
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Explorations in capturing essence of ideology and architecture
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Videography L to R Banaras The ghats, cloth and Architecture View Flower Market, Ahmedabad View Strawberry Fields in Rishikesh View
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Half.arted Personal project consisting of cartoons, illustrations, animation art aimed at selfexploration, expression of mental health, philosophy, and the human condition. This section shows personal, commissioned and featured works.
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Work commenting on the nature of the world, social human relationships, and our own visceral universes, These are attempts at unlearning, redefining and looking at established norms from a critical point of view.
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L: Commissioned Illustration R: Entry for “Voice of Art” contest by Vivel, India (shortlisted)
The brief was to illustrate four friends spending a relaxing evening on a gazebo, featuring elements from their lives - a boardgame, a frequently spotted, shady aeroplane
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On choice and being told “One cannot do it all” The brief was to create something empowering for women with the spirit of no compromises (“Ab Samjhauta Nahi”). The illustration shows a woman who refuses succumb to one choice for the fear of missing out on others. The distressed expression shows her determination to follow her heart despite difficulty.
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Left to Right Entry for “Design Fights Covid” Campaign by Art&Found Artwork to raise funds for people affected by Covid-19. gathered by Art For Charity Series of Illustrations for Mind Research Foundation on the topic “Work From Home” in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic
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Still life illustration
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On the tendency of artists of remaining torn between hiding (for the fear of feeling exposed) and revealing (for the sake of authenticity)
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F r o w n Stills from experiment in disfiguration to push the limitation of facial expression View
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C l o s e d Stills from short animation experiment to express isolation View
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Indifference Left: Acrylic on paper Right: Stills from short animation
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Experiment in animation to express feelings of detachment, absurdity and aloofness View
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Writing Poetry, Personal Essays, reviews Find more here.
On Chokher bali - the book and the show My mother’s living legacy is her taste in literature, some of which I have come to acquire over time. More than 3 years ago, she and I watched ‘Stories by Rabindranath Tagore’, a show directed by Anurag Basu which aired on EpicTV after I returned from my Math and Physics tuitions. Amongst them, ‘Chokher Bali’ (A grain of sand) was the first and only series that we finished, although I now wish we had seen them all. I don’t recall being so mesmerised by a plot ever before that, since I am more of a language than a story person. I like the many full stops of Arundhati Roy while my mother struggles to understand how her characters are even related to one another. I took a long, long time to finish Chokher Bali, the book. Work, my first excuse. Insufficient translation, another. My usual favourites are hardly story-based but I found myself reading this one for just that. Mahendra, a spoiled - vain, arrogant man. Ashalata, a child blinded by her ephemeral love. Bihari - a loyal, sensible, desirable, intelligent person. And Binodini. An envious widow who knows too much, does too much, too proud of her beauty, recognises the power she can have on any man she wants - Tagore’s bold heroine of the time, the backbone of this book. Radhika Apte played Binodini so convincingly on the show that I had to read Tagore’s description of her, where I think the translation fails. The strong plot gets lost as it ends almost as if the author was struggling to find a way to end it, what does surface is how one woman and the circumstances she incepts change everything and everyone, including herself. For better. All their vanity, challenged and conquered; All their immaturity, questioned and ushered into responsibility. All their pride, broken and brought to the ground. I discussed in depth how I felt about these characters with my mother over the phone and how jumbled up the end seemed to me. She had trouble recalling the events given how long ago she read it. She tells me how writing differed in that age, how sudden ends are a new trend, how sometimes even the masters falter. In the end I told her I kept imagining Radhika Apte as Binodini. She imagined Aishwarya Rai as she played her in a movie long ago. What I see from a distance is gap, but it has similar things on both ends. My mother has come a long way from just reading, and if I even try to strike an analogy there I can safely assume I’m gonna get there one day, where language comes to me instead of me reaching out to it, and I have the courage to conjure up characters and roll them into a story.
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It’s my mother’s living legacy and it’s coming with me to my grave, hopefully passed on, on the way.
On fate and Bojack Horseman Albert Camus’s essay ‘The myth of Sisyphus’, upon finishing, leaves one confused. A book that starts with the question of why suicide is not the answer to the “absurd”, to existentialism, when ends with the sentence “One must IMAGINE Sisyphus happy”, leaves one craving for a clearer answer. But it is there, after 114 pages of explaining what the absurd is, that it asks you to take over. Sisyphus was cursed by the Gods to roll a rock up a slope, only for it to tumble down over and over again endlessly. Albert Camus imagines Sisyphus reaching back for the rock at the bottom of the slope, during which he “returns to consciousness”. What becomes of us when we hope for a future that is devoid of the struggles of our present? The essay is a theory of how, when one discards the idea of fate being a supernatural thing which one does not control, and accepts it as something one has authority over, true happiness surfaces. When we hope and have faith for a better future, we disregard the present and seek happiness that is yet to arrive. Sisyphus must be happy because he has accepted his fate. I drew Bojack in his place, because this is who Bojack needs to be. Those who’ve seen the show will know how unsatisfied he is with all that he has, how he’s always waiting for the next good thing to finally satiate him, which he is convinced it will. But it never does. And so his misery remains never-ending. It is in the act of acceptance where he shall finally find himself content, I’m presuming, as will we.
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FOR YOUR TIME AND CONSIDERATION Reach me at: taruna4197@gmail.com +91 8980451638