In Sleep Wrestlers the tension between somnolence and insomnia is performed in visual intimacy of two-ness with a revolutionary representation of women of different generations.
Mirroring and twinning are a frequent preoccupation in both topic and image - making in the work of Sonia Khurana. They now acquire a new dimension because there would be two women, two prone bodies, ostensibly mother and daughter, but also two different states of mind.
In this piece, the generational dimension marks time in two lives but also in the different moments of history they have witnessed.
The shift from horizontal to vertical is a powerful one. Sleep and death are on the mythic, horizontal axis. The upright position confers on the sleeping women the presence of an other, encountered not so much in vulnerability as in self-absorption. As women they move beyond the gendered condition of the horizontal.
Each shift is simulated as a time-lapse edit. The work creates its own rhythm for the curious mobility of the immobile in sleep, presented in compressed time.
[excerpted with permission from Griselda Pollock’s essay on artist Sonia Khurana, 2016]
![Sleep Wrestlers [M-other] II](https://dza2a2ql7zktf.cloudfront.net/binaries-cdn/dqzqcuqf9/image/fetch/w_auto,c_fill,q_auto,dpr_1.0,f_auto,h_500/https://d2u3kfwd92fzu7.cloudfront.net/catalog/artwork/gallery/1088/Sonai_Khurana-5.jpg)