22/08/2026
Hell is other people (“L’enfer, c’est les autres” ), is a line written by Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1944 play No Exit. It names a particular anguish: the way another’s gaze can fix us into a single, static image. He articulates a kind of violence in being seen once, and mistaken for the whole of who we are.
Vyom ‘s works, made from metals whose colours and textures continue to change over time, refuse to be judged as a whole at any moment. Carbon residue will fall away. Oxidation will bring in new reds and browns. Although Vyom’s practice has always leaned towards posthumanism, it has taken him the better part of two decades to truly find camaraderie with the materials he works with and be able to allow the material and processes to be participant in the making. He now relinquishes part authorship of his works to humidity, air, light and time. Both viewer and artist are decentred in the life of the work, which may in the end outlast our claim to it.
Hell is Other People marks an important threshold in Vyom’s practice. For years, he accumulated fragments of metal, building materials, failed experiments and discarded objects across small storage spaces, often without fully knowing why he was holding on to them. With the opening of a new workshop, these materials could finally be laid out, revisited and seen. What emerged was a body of work shaped by intuition, memory and a submission of control. The artist steps back. The final transformation belongs to the material’s own internal logic.
Vyom asks the viewer to witness the exhibition in its process of transformation, not fix it in a single gaze. Perhaps, he asks the same for himself and us. “My work is only beginning”, he says.
Curated by Ayesha Parikh
at Art and Charlie opens 22 Aug 2026, 6pm
