Looking Up

A rejection of fear and an embrace of hope, Rajita Tippavajhala’s Looking Up breaks down the dichotomy between life and death. Tippavajhala explains that the present work is an ode to her father, who recently passed away, and a means to find strength in sadness and inspire others to do the same. Her decision to paint cut flowers in every stage of their bloom and subsequent decomposition is key to understanding her radical rejection of death’s inhibiting parameters.

Cut flowers are such an interesting visual metaphor because they are both alive and dead, much like the memories of our loved ones. The people we have lost are severed from life like the flower from its bush, but they live on and flourish in our memories like the flowers in the vase. Only when we despair at the irreversible absolutism of death do our loved ones become entirely lost. Tippavajhala refuses to capitulate to the dictatorship of death by not allowing it to consume the memory of her father. Instead, she celebrates his life in every vibrant blossom. What I find most inspiring and radical is her refusal to let death control her thinking in its absence or presence. Were she to try and remove death from the picture entirely, she would still be under its control because if you are too scared to acknowledge something, you will never shed its power over you. Brilliantly, she chooses a visual metaphor that simultaneously encapsulates life and death. Most importantly, neither life nor death is Looking Up's primary subject. Instead, beauty is the painting's main protagonist, and as long as we can find beauty, death is only another part of life.