The ash that was my heart
is spewing fire

The bride is young her
hide is smoothly stretched

Not wasted yet by age
nor any breeding

It's on her body that
I write my play

As a direct continuation of the Medea project came in 1995 three robes fashioned out of mylar and painted in acrylic. Intended to represent the three states of being that are evident in the character of Medea, the robes were but one garment that went through metamorphoses even as the character of Medea was transfigured from being the princess of Colchis adept at alchemy (the Alchemist’s Robe), to the collaborator with Jason, the bride who helped him to steal the Golden Fleece (the Bridal Robe), and on to the character of vengeance who destroys Jason’s new bride with a present of a bridal gown infused with poison (the Robe of Vengeance). When the work was put on display at the Max Mueller Bhavan Bombay in 1996, the three robes along with a series of drawings and a painted box occupied the same space as the painted panels for the Medea project in 1993. On the wall facing the hanging robes was a wall drawing n charcoal of a female Mutant, the disrobed body repeatedly punctured by erasures. This ‘postscript’ to the Medea project was peculiarly silent. The play is over, the costumes hung up, the survivor a partially effaced image of a sub-human creature and on the floor, Mueller’s words from the Medea text.
"I want to break mankind apart into two
And live in the empty middle I
No man and no woman… .”

read essay by Chaitanya Sambrani

1995 First Africus Biennale, Johannesburg
1996 Max Mueller Bhavan Bombay.