Experiments with Truth

‘Experiments with Truth’ is the title of Gandhi’s autobiography. This body of work deals with both the subject of Gandhi (the myth of how close to the truth he was, the shroud of darkness over his life), and Nilsen-Misra’s drawing process, which is an experiment in changing light, changing form, changing meaning and truth. 

Working in the inky darkness with just a single lamp to illuminate the scene in front of him, Nilsen-Misra produces eerie filmic and domestic scenes shrouded in shadows. Working with black chalk on blacker chalk, the scenes that emerge reflect fragments of a life. One becomes aware of a deep, closeted space, underneath the shadows that draw the viewer inward, as if you are looking deeper into and unknown and unconscious space. 

From a reading of Gandhi as a potential gay icon, based on various personal correspondence with Kallenbach and others, Nilsen-Misra also questions whether the icon was experimenting with his sexuality, and whether he was able to live out his truth or had to leave it in the shadows. Nilsen-Misra points out that, as a gay man himself, he is similarly uncertain of being completely transparent in spaces of public South Africa and at times finds himself moving in the proverbial shadows.