Introduction

My Personal Dystopia” (2013) marks the second step in my evolving journey. Created during my student years in Srinagar—when I lived in Qamarwari and studied at the Department of Music and Fine Arts, Rajbagh—this piece gathers fragments of both worlds into a single field of memory and imagination. Streets, buildings, and emotions intersect here, forming an inner cartography of chaos and longing.

Unlike “My Personal Utopia,” which emerged through accident and play, this work is a conscious confrontation with disorder, fragility, and urban displacement. Ink and pen carve architectural lines while also revealing fractures of the human condition—where order resists, yet chaos always insists on presence.

Reflection

Looking back, I see “My Personal Dystopia” not only as a diary of place and time, but as an early expression of my larger cosmopolitan vision. For me, art is not confined to one angle, one story, or one meaning. Each work becomes a shifting map of memory and identity—where personal experience merges with collective history, and the artwork itself becomes a dialogue between self, city, and world.

Cosmo Mapping — The Series

Cosmo Mapping is the name I give to this philosophy and practice. In it, every artwork unfolds as a map—of memory, place, identity, and imagination. I let forms flow across directions, merging accident with intention, cityscapes with inner landscapes, order with chaos. What began with my early student experiences in Srinagar has since grown into a language of interconnectedness—a cosmopolitan way of seeing and creating.

Through Cosmo Mapping, I seek to remind that art is never fixed; it is layered, infinite, and alive. Each piece becomes a cartography of emotions and histories, an invitation to see the world as a shared map of human experience.