BRICKs WITHOUT FULL STOPS
‘The structure of my work is a way to build up space within space: to take the viewer on a journey.’
Cities need to be human friendly. One cannot hinder or deny the inexorable growth of cities: as an artist I am interested in what ways and to what extent this growth takes place. Probably there is no end to the growth of a city and we have to create our own ‘spaces’ in an effort to retain a level of sustainability for humans within the built habitat.
Cities must live with their history, their juxtaposition of architecture, and their complex relationship to time.
For the past 6-7 years I have been working on different issues related to Indian cities. In ‘Bricks without full stops’ I have concentrated on Mumbai as one of the major dynamic cities of India. To me the city is a story of changing landscapes and the work raises certain questions and issues which hopefully may provoke Mumbaikers to look at the city in ways differing from the norm.
The work is divided into three different steps:
- Exploring the historical references of Mumbai.
The first structure is a stack of bricks with images and drawings of historical references. Here the bricks represent the basic unit of any man-made space.
- The dynamic between time and space in Mumbai.
The second structure in the shape of steps comprises images of contemporary time and space. The structure brings to mind Jantar Mantar in Delhi, an architectural device that was built to measure time and space in ancient India. Here my interest is in taking a structure such as Jantar Mantar to remind us of our history whilst simultaneously showing how cities like Mumbai measures contemporary time and space.
- Public telephones, where with one rupee one can start ‘communication’ with others.
Here photographs of P.C.Os alongside actual phones, as well as ring tones connote the moving content of a city like Mumbai: the illusion and void we feel, even as we are connected everywhere.
