Raunaq Bahl (b. 1999, India) is a visual artist and writer currently living and working in Sydney, Australia. Born and brought up in New Delhi, he writes in English, Hindustani, and often, a mix of both. His intimate work explores themes of longing, distance, and love, time and again inspired by the tender canvas of everyday life. When not haunting local bookstores or scribbling haikus on paper napkins, you would find him hoarding postcards, catching stillness, or simply dreaming about people, places, and things.
Latest Work
light//roshni
dark hallways such as this have always petrified me since i was a child. darkness, especially at night, was terrifying for me. it fuelled my imagination with vicious visions and sinister sounds. back then, darkness felt like a strange substance. it surrounded, suffocated, and swallowed. without mercy. but being scared of the dark is normal, it is just evolution; this is how we’re wired. this is what i would say to myself as i ran around as fast i could, imaginary ghosts chasing me, and turned on every light i could find within the hallway or the adjoining rooms of my house. i still don’t know how i feel about darkness.
so i took these photographs to document my fear. they document tension and dread. they document the desolation caused by darkness, by nothingness. they represent my inability to embrace the unknown. but they also document comfort. they document the feeling of lightness, and light itself. momentary solace displacing distress. intersecting streaks of fluorescent yellow splashed onto a hitherto concealed canvas— white walls, sanded planks of wood and shiny doorknobs. a sudden, yet soft pang of warmth. a gush of relief.
what struck me when i took these pictures was the thought that maybe light and dark are not antagonistic forces. not opposites, but complements. in these pictures, there is fear. but there is calm, too. there is a known. there is an unknown. there is mystery, and there is revelation. it makes me think about the transience of distress, of discomfort. and perhaps, about the coexistence of fear and hope.