Chandigarh Fine Arts Museum 2001
Curated by Peter Nagy
I don’t know how much my works are based on the given theme, but for sure it was based on the space where the Museum is located. Also the site within the Museum was inspiring. Chandigarh Fine Arts Museum was the site, which was built by a disciple and colleague of Corbusier. Unlike other artists within our group I did not took much interest with the artefacts of Museum, rather the site and how the source of inspiration worked from the city Builder Corbusier.
After partition it was Prime Minister Nehru who commissioned Corbusier to build the urban scape onto a barren land. As an artist when I first visited Chandigarh I find the city has been divided in three major section 1: the Capitol Complex and other structure by Corbusier. 2: the geometric planed city roads and various sector 3: Neckchand ‘s Rock Garden, all together it’s strange combination with Hard core Modernist Geometry and organic assemblage.
The site I got it was 25 square feet Exhibition hall with column and ample sky light. It was trigger thought to connect with Corbusier in context of present days [ 2001] how one young artist is connecting with Chandigarh as it is. That’s the vantage points where my artistic intervention starts.
My whole installation starts with Xerox and photographic visuals, I took the money constrain part of the project as concept and execution process. Viewer could take a look onto the work interact with the Artist book and may be read a whole short story what has extracted from Corbusier’s extended thoughts.
My entire body of work was a single statement of city as it looks and the transformation and questioning how much still history alive. Because city never stop, it grows horizontally and vertically both and sometime direction less. So sustainability of city is very important in context of history with contemporary aspects.
Samit Das
New Delhi 2001
