Hi, I'm HIMANK NAGPAL !

Ambiguous loss, a term coined by Pauline Boss, occurs when an individual is unable to achieve emotional closure or a lucid understanding of their loss. A missing airplane, a natural disaster like the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 that caused thousands to disappear, soldiers who go missing in wars are some of the seemingly violent examples of such a loss. However, it even works more insidiously with seemingly simpler events, yet potentially devastating for those who experience it. Partners or children who leave or go missing, termination of pregnancy, infertility, family members growing old and absent-minded from diseases such as Alzheimer’s, separation from one’s homeland due to immigration, and even some of the sadness caused by uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic comes under the umbrella term of ambiguous loss. "Will we ever see each other again ?" is an oft-repeated question that lingers in the minds of people enduring such losses. The inability to answer such questions or largely resolve such losses leaves a person probing for answers, complicating and often delaying the grieving process, resulting in Unresolved Grief.  

 

My installation, titled Unresolved, is a memorial that attempts to hold space for “stories” of grief caused by such losses, experienced by real people as they go on with their respective journeys of life, hoping to get closure from their amorphous emotional wounds. The stories form the core of the installation and are relatable. By being so, they attempt to increase a person’s ken of such losses, to better recognize and empathize with the people. 

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Through this installation, I want to portray the uncertainties faced by the people in such indeterminate situations of losses. They oscillate between hope and hopelessness in their tumultuous cauldron of emotions, unable to decipher if their loved ones are “there” or “not there,” either physically or psychologically.