Friday 28th May At Lunch we had a zoom lecture with Shabra Nayar, a design graduate who makes beautiful lantana cane elephants. In the Artis Mundi exhibition, all of Prabhakars work was surreal and distorted, with the exception of one oil painting of a realistic indian elephant. After the talk today I was thinking about what it could represent and what a powerful symbol elephants are. Pachputes elephant was the first one you saw in a series of oil paintings, the rest denoting farmers and labourers in harsh, brash colours and distorted positions. I think maybe the lone, perfect jungle-book-esque Elephant stands as a symbol for what people see rural India to be from the outside, this place thats free and wild. The naturalistic elephant was a stark contrast to the rest of the images in his work, and is a jarring statement of - no thats not reality, reality is much more surreal, much harsher and much more sinister. Just some tired musings about elephants really.