sleepsutra
a story of all the sleeps you will ever sleep
The Substance:
Sleepsutra is the story of our consciousness as it moves through waking, dreaming, and deep sleep—from the moment one is born in this body, watched over by parents, to sleeping beside lovers, companions, and friends, to the times we sleep by ourselves –alone, suffering on hospital beds, getting run over on pavements, drifting off in bathtubs to a dangerously drowsy ride on a bike – until the day this body is finally borne. This is an ode to that sleep – Fourty-Eight adventures under the covers. Learn more about the second edition in this review on Animation Express. Click here to read a feature on the release of the first edition.
The Form: Materiality, Craft and Analog Practice
The Sleepsutra is a handmade, small-edition artist book, which features 48 sleeps across 3 volumes (96 pp. total).
Each of the three volumes is wider than a metric foot, and as tall as your index finger. Stories spread in three colour variations black ink on white, a tinge of grey on a darker grey, and white ink on black 250 gsm Renoir paper, chosen for its density and surface quality.
Each hardcover volume has back to back hand-pasted pages, with a smooth satin finish, soft and sensuous to touch with a deliberate heaviness, echoing the material presence of ancient Indian palm-leaf manuscripts. The hardbound, handbound binding encourages a bodily mode of reading—handled slowly, held close, and experienced through both hands and time.
The book highlights events that happen to us everyday … and night in our waking (जाग्रत्), dream (स्वप्न), and deep sleep (सुषुप्ति) states. These incidents have precision and regularity but that does not make them normal. Familiar perhaps… but definitely not normal.
Sleepsutra Genesis: Context, Research & Artistic Intent
The sleepsutra started as a small assignment during a elective course when I was studying at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in 2005. The piece originates from a near-death experience, following a fall from a building that resulted in a coma. This experience became the starting point for a long-term, analog inquiry into how awareness inhabits and exits the body. Over fifteen years, fragments, observations, and notes accumulated—not to form a linear narrative, but a field of lived states. Sleepsutra first took book form in 2018, with a second two-part edition in 2019 and later expanded into a three-volume edition in 2021.