Kiran Subbaiah was formally trained as a sculptor but uses other media including text, audio, video, electronics and informatics. A common tendency in his practice is to exploit the form and function of material/ media, addressing the relationship between their aesthetic and use-value to form analogies for contradictions inherent in everyday life. His objects aspire to emancipate themselves from their original use potential. With simple binaries: functional/defunct, action/reaction and cause/effect Subbaiah teases out his ideas and observations. Often everyday objects are manipulated into paradoxes. Under the disguise of street-signs and official notices his public-space ‘insertions’ carry self-subversive authoritarian messages like “Prohibitions Strictly Forbidden”. In his recent videos, the artist performs in fictitious autobiographical plots – as though to deliver his given self to the aspired.