Where a Crack in Glass Becomes a River: Sarika Dandona Opens the Doors to Hidden Worlds

A photographic journey into the multiverse that lives inside ordinary matter

Look closely at a shard of broken glass. Now look closer still. That thin line of fracture may be a river delta seen from the sky, or the branching map of a neural network. It may even be a fault line running through an ancient landscape.

This is the world of Sarika Dandona, and from 27 October to 1 November 2026, the LTC Gallery at Bikaner House, New Delhi, invites you to step inside it.

Her solo exhibition, Capturing the Multiverse: Parallel States of Matter and Perception, is curated by the noted critic-curator Georgina Maddox. It asks a quietly radical question: what if the multiverse is not only found in distant galaxies and scientific theory, but also lives within the act of seeing?

The Multiverse, Reimagined

In popular imagination, the multiverse means parallel universes far removed from daily life. Dandona turns that idea inward. For her, the multiverse is a way of understanding perception itself, where several realities can exist within the same moment, the same material and the same field of vision.

Working primarily with macro photography, she turns her lens on the most ordinary of substances: glass, ice, water, fire and weathered surfaces. She treats them not as objects but as living systems. Through light, movement, fracture, reflection and change, these materials open up as portals to worlds that feel both microscopic and cosmic.

Glass fractures into river deltas, neural networks and geological fault lines
Melting ice becomes an aerial landscape or the atmosphere of a distant planet
Liquid forms suggest biological growth, cosmic movement and elemental flux
Fire turns into both pure energy and living architecture

In these visual correspondences, the boundaries between the natural and the imagined, the microscopic and the monumental, slowly dissolve.

The Philosophy of Change

Sarika Dandona looks at the multiverse as parallel material realities, hidden dimensions and microcosms tucked inside matter itself. They reveal themselves only through the interplay of material illusion, light and transformation.

What holds her attention is the state of becoming: ice softening into water, fire flickering into smoke, glass breaking into new patterns. Philosophically, this speaks of relentless change, impermanence and interconnectedness. It echoes a Buddhist teaching that nothing exists in isolation or in absolute stillness. Everything evolves through cause and effect, as part of a larger whole.

In her frames, nothing is ever finished. Everything is on its way to becoming something else.

One Language, Many Scales

At the heart of the exhibition lies a gentle but powerful idea: interconnectedness.

Despite their obvious differences, materials often speak in strikingly similar visual languages. Patterns repeat across scales. Structures recur across environments. Forms echo one another across vastly different dimensions. A drop of water and a distant nebula, it seems, may share more than we imagine.

Curator Georgina Maddox describes Dandona’s work as an exploration of “parallel material realities”, shaped by the interplay of material illusion, light and transformation. The photographs invite us to move past the surface of things and to see matter as something forever changing, connecting and revealing new forms.

Discovery, Not Fabrication

In an age of digital manipulation and AI-generated imagery, one thing about Dandona’s practice stands out. The body of work is positioned as experimental photographic art, distinct from AI-generated abstraction. Every image comes from real physical phenomena.

The transformations are captured in-camera, through the interaction of light and materials. The artist describes her process as embodied observation, a journey of discovery rather than fabrication. The images may look otherworldly, but their roots lie firmly in reality, which gives the works a rare photographic authenticity.

From Material to Multiverse

Every photograph begins with an encounter with an ordinary material. Through careful observation, light, framing and proximity, familiar objects reveal forms that go beyond their physical origins.

These are not digital constructions or imagined abstractions. They are photographs of real materials seen from unfamiliar perspectives. Each work invites the viewer to travel from material reality to perceptual possibility, where the ordinary quietly unfolds into the extraordinary.

Beyond the Frame

For Dandona, the photograph is only the beginning. The way an image is shown, including its scale, placement, materiality and relationship to other works, is as important as the image itself. Her photographs hold the potential to grow into interdisciplinary installations that engage with architectural integration, material culture, immersive sensory environments and speculative materialism.

A Mind Shaped by Many Worlds

Dandona is a self-taught, award-winning abstract photo-visual artist, but her story begins elsewhere. A common impulse, curiosity, runs through every chapter of it:

Biotechnology and microbiology trained her to observe closely and recognise patterns hidden from the naked eye
Journalism sharpened a way of looking rooted in inquiry, context and the understanding that every visible reality has layers beneath the surface
Healthcare entrepreneurship taught her to navigate complexity, uncertainty and systems in constant evolution

Photography became the space where all these experiences converged, turning observation into a form of visual inquiry. For the last fifteen years, she has built a sustained practice around material transformation.

In her own words:

“Reality is rarely singular. The closer we look, the more layers emerge.”
— Sarika Dandona

It is this very phenomenon that inspired Multiverse.

An Invitation to Look Again

Each photograph asks the viewer to pause, look again and reconsider what seems familiar. The works resist a single interpretation. They welcome your memories, associations and imagination into the encounter.

The multiverse has become a compelling source of inspiration in contemporary art, allowing artists to explore alternate realities, shifting identities and layered narratives that go beyond linear time and space. Dandona shows that these other worlds need not be sought in the cosmos. They are waiting in a melting cube of ice, a spark of fire, a crack in glass.

Beneath every surface lies another world waiting to be seen.

About the Artist

Sarika Dandona is a self-taught, award-winning abstract photo-visual artist whose practice centres on observing material transformation. Working mainly with macro photography, she explores glass, ice, water, fire and other physical materials, revealing patterns that link the microscopic with the cosmic. Her journey across science, journalism, entrepreneurship and art shapes her approach to photography as a form of visual investigation and discovery.

About the Curator

Georgina Maddox is a critic-curator known for her engagement with contemporary Indian art and critical writing. Through Capturing the Multiverse, she draws attention to Dandona’s distinctive approach to photography, materiality, perception and transformation.