Zero to the Right

Bengaluru-based artist Sunoj D’s installation at Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014, Zero to the Right (2014), is an articulation in sound and visual of intangible economic relations and transactions that affect our daily lives. The installation was conceived while the artist was on a residency in Dubai, a financial hub which employs millions of migrant workers from Kerala whose earnings fuel the state’s consumer economy.

To create Zero to the Right, Sunoj converted his residency production budget of $2,000 into Dubai Dirham (then 7,346 Dirhams) and Indian Rupee (then 1,25,427 Rupees). Recordings of these sums being counted aloud —from 1 to 2000 in English; 1 to 7,346 in Arabic and from 1 to 1,25,427 in Malayalam – play simultaneously out of loudspeakers that form a part of Sunoj’s installation. According to the artist, reciting and listening to these numbers over many hours was to him a meditative act– the process of creation itself becoming a personal performance.

Also part of Zero to the Right are wall murals made of marks the artist made on the wall as each dollar, dirham and rupee were counted. If the articulations in sound incorporated into the numbers the breath and rhythm of bodies that recited them, the drawings are the result of a similarly corporeal process of marking them by hand.

By mapping three points on the globe through an economic statistic, Sunoj in Zero to the Right creates a provocative meditation on time, labour and iniquity.