6 Photographs – Shiksha Dheda

ARTIST STATEMENT

The series relates to a trip to Kyoto, Japan in August 2019. The complete immersion of natural and architectural beauty was astounding. Every monument and/or landmark visited offered its own tale; its own story. Also known as the cultural capital of Japan, shrines and temples are found on almost every street – ranging from large monuments to miniscule home shrines. Each place of worship offering its own sense of belonging, nonetheless. The most magnificent and breathtaking (literally, because one has to hike up a mountainous hill) shrine, however was the Fushimi-Inari Taisha Shrine (pictured in Pathway to devotion). This shrine features hundreds of vermillion gates, almost as though as one passes through each gate, a new level of calm and meditation is reached. Surmounting this shrine is both a physical and spiritual achievement.

Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses poetry(mostly) to express her internal and external struggles and journeys, inclusive of her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures. Mostly, however, she writes in the hopes that someday, someone will see her as she is; an incomplete poem. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her work has been featured (on/forthcoming) in Mixed Mag,  The Daily Drunk, Visual Verse, The Kalahari Review, Brave Voices, Glitchwords,  Versification, and elsewhere. Twitter: @ShikshaWrites