Contextual Modernism explores the decontextualization, and re-contextualization of traditional western religious imagery in a South Asian context.

An image of the Virgin Mary has been laboriously drawing using graphite and charcoal. This image has then been digitized, modified, printed out, and drawn upon again.

These cycles of drawing, digitization, and re-drawing result in permanent distortions on the image. These distortions are reminiscent of modern cultural transformations in the digital space.

Through these distortions, a third eye, or ajna chakra, has been placed on the image of the veiled virgin. This distortion decontextualizes the existing western religious imagery, much in the way South Asian imagery has historically been appropriated into modern western cultural lexicon.

In the internet age, the origins of cultural artifacts are often lost after repeated digital thrashing.