Making of Wild Cranes

Some of these pieces have been written over time, but several of them through the pandemic summer of 2020,
when poetry, music and Wild Cranes became a refuge from negativity, a place for the magic of life and human relationships. Some are freeze frames of a moment in time, a flashback, or a daydream. Others are meditations on confluence and coincidence, on destiny, fate and chance. Some were scribbled in the margins of a boarding pass, or of a notebook on a remote assignment. Many of us wish to transcend boundaries, perhaps to be greater than ourselves. Translating these pieces offered a door to new possibilities.

In an alignment of stars, Liuyu Ivy Chen, writer, poet, alchemist, brought her incredible sensitivity to the translation. But I wanted the thoughts to transform further, into something visual. The next step led obviously to the elegance and power of traditional calligraphy. In the installation that visual element dominates so that at first glance one may perhaps wonder which has been translated, the Chinese into English, or the English into Chinese – and whether it makes any difference.

The incredibly talented Zhao Xu came into the picture to turn this step into reality. And my daughter Tanya Ghosh,
a brilliant artist, turned all these pieces into objects of a unified, luminous beauty.

— Nirmal Ghosh