DIGITAL COPY ON MAGZTERFlushing the City, Gautam Bhatia, 2014, 20" x 30", Pencil on PaperBelow the surface of this unsettled theatre,
ancient roots convulse and choke in a drama
that remains fragmented and inconclusive. In
the absence of a serious urban storyline, the city
is just another amusement park. Throughout
the city, vast stretches of land are reclaimed with
new marketing ideals and insistent messages of
consumption. The old is demolished to make
room for bigger profitable ventures. Apartments
replace bungalows. The owners of former garden
houses are boxed into a 6th floor flat, like
perishables in a fridge compartment.
Out on the street, art and architecture jostle
for space, trying desperately to break free from
the surrounding delirium. But their identity is
contaminated by exposure, not cultural overlays.
In a place charged with excessive sweat and
tension, public art fares even worse. In North
Delhi, a blue-suited Ambedkar shares the street
with vegetable vendors and stray dogs. At a
roundabout, Gandhi’s Salt March is shrouded
in the fog of winter coal fires, less sculpture,
more political statement. Elsewhere, Nehru finds
himself looking down a chaotic stream of traffic,
Queen Victoria contemplating the crowds in a
noisy bazaar.
In the brisk tumultuous atmosphere of Delhi,
public participation is not merely a visual
challenge but becomes an opportunity to lift
mundane routines to a new level. But does it
happen? Naturally, the social nature of a place
itself moulds attitudes to art, and public political
sculpture only elicits a common reaction of
reverence. But little of the city’s cultural life
invades public space. Only the private gallery’s
enclosed walls come to the rescue, issuing
disagreements and provocations – subjects that
may cause riots if they appear on the street.
The art fairs are an even more brazen output of
repressed desires and political beliefs.
When it does come, the Art Fair arrives with the
celestial force of an Apollo spacecraft, complete
with launch, days of frenzy and ceremony, frantic
participation, then eventual closure. Within a
few days it disappears from memory.IAF - Delhi Connecting Art/ feb 2016 - mar 2016 / arts illustrated /^103