Chila's Liberty and Light combines the pacifist message of Pablo Picasso's Guernica with the iconography of her own rich Hindu-Punjabi cultural heritage. The 20th-century masterpiece provides her inspiration for condemning today’s global turbulences. A succession of pandemic crises, wars and climate-change threats have framed the first decades of the 21st century.
Her response to this apocalyptic state is the symbolic and real light produced by an installation designed to lift the spirits of its spectators. A deployment of brilliant neon sculptures: colourful candies, tuk-tuks from south-east Asia, Hindu gods and goddesses, wild animals (bees, flamingos, snakes) and lots of flowers.
New sculptures as well as recycled ones from previous projects, in a gesture of commitment to sustainable practices. An explosion of light and colour in a collective context of darkness.