NS Harsha was born in Mysore, India, in 1969, where he currently lives and works. Harsha was educated at the Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts in Mysore, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts (painting) in 1992 and later a Master of Fine Arts (painting) from the MS University in Baroda. Harsha participated in the 'Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art', Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, in 1999, and 'The 2nd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale: Imagined workshop', Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan in 2002, where the triptych We come, we eat and we sleep was displayed.

Artist Jitish Kallat has commented that We come, we eat and we sleep is 'an epic-scaled anthropocentric wallpaper that parodies the flow of life. In the left-hand panel, a thick traffic of barefoot pilgrims/exiles/revellers moves in chorus, carrying with them a merchandise of poetic metaphors. They easily navigate the river-hurdle to feast upon a ceremonious meal laid on banana leaf, which forms the central panel. The third panel is a dormitory/cemetery where the well-fed nomads finally settle down draped in unsullied white cloth. NS Harsha provides us no easy prescriptions to decipher the apparent absurdity and frontal grandeur of this work.'(1)

Harsha worked on the central panel of the triptych between 1999 and 2001. He describes how the triptych evolved: 'I started with a simple idea to paint people having [a] meal together in rows, which we do often here. Then this image of people having [a] meal became more and more a symbol for me. I felt "we eat/we consume" in a celebrative way with all those colourful cloths and grandeur of style of eating [while] sitting. Some people ask me why I titled "We come, we eat and we sleep". This title comes at the last moment I guess. The whole reason to paint this canvas was very "philosophical" for me. There was a point where I wanted to make a work which defines the basic idea of getting into a space, and live in that abstract space for some time, and leave that space after one consumes that space. This was a broad idea where I was thinking [about] life itself as well as individual interests in this life.'(2)

To realise these concepts in a painted form, Harsha has used a striking monochromatic background for each panel - yellow, blue and white. In this painting the conventions of the miniature, the cartoon styles of popular magazines and the mural traditions of south India, are reflected against elements of wry humour and benevolent, anecdotal storytelling. The two panels residing on either side of the initial central painting suggest a loose narrative sequence. The left panel plots the pilgrimage of figures traversing small hills across an otherwise flat and apparently sandy plane, in which a river flows vertically to dramatically divide the picture surface. Some are carrying their possessions while others walk unencumbered. Each figure is differentiated by their gait, clothes, demeanour and accessories, imparting a sense of individual character and charm. One figure wading through the river holds a urinal (perhaps referring to the one Marcel Duchamp made famous) above his head, protecting it like a precious symbol from the river's current. Others save instruments and sacks of clothes. In an almost dream-like way, these figures float across the picture's surface. There is deliberately no linear perspective. As the artist states, 'I wanted to place [these] figures in a very undefined space.'(3) This holds true for the triptych, which disrupts the conventions of painting figures and landscape by creating an ethereal, uniform and suspended space.

In each painting the figures are set in straight lines, in the manner of a frieze or mural. In the right panel, Harsha has painted rows of sleeping figures on individual flat beds or mats. A single length of diaphanous cloth covers the figures, extending to the end of each row and falling down to continue along the next. The recumbent figures illustrate a huge variety in sleeping positions, and all are quietly bound together by a soft, translucent drape. Anecdotal details such as a man's bed on fire while he sleeps, an amputee using his prosthetic leg as a pillow and a mother cradling her child in sleep, together, form a rhythm. Underlying the entire work are the rhythms and cycles of life - of birth, existence and death. Fixed to the pulse of the triptych are the tides of journey, migration and movement as they relate to the viewer as much as to the subjects of the paintings.

1. Kallat, Jitish. 'N.S. Harsha', in The 2nd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale: Imagined workshop. Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, 2002, p.123.

2. Harsha, NS, Letter to Suhanya Raffel, 26 June 2002.

3. Harsha, Letter to Raffel.