| The India of today is a vastly different India from the one I have grown up in, it’s a country fighting for economic pride of place in a global population which seems to be driven only by materialistic wants and needs. I have been heavily influenced by the changing urban landscape especially in cities such as Mumbai and Kolkata, where I have spent the majority of my years in India. I see an unfortunate disregard for the old, for objects and people that have been so much a part of my visual reference since my childhood in the bylanes of Kolkata, to my early years in Mumbai, that in a few years they too will vanish from our visual repertoire. I have tried to use these images and situations as the main subject of my work, where objects and people from an era slowly fading away into distant memory, jostle for space amidst a new India ready for change and unfortunately, a complete upheaval of the past. I felt a need to try and preserve these times through my work; images and stories of people, places and objects that have had a profound bearing on where we have reached or where India as a country has reached in the 21st century.
I have tried to create a collection of work which deals with that, an India looking for its identity today with its arms and roots steeped in a culture and history centuries old, the imagery is treated in a way which is at the same time old and new, familiar situations, people and objects which are easily identifiable by anyone who has grown up, or visited India recently and in the past. The style of work is very much a part of popular culture today and I have used colours to try and make the images look some what like packages on a shelf display in a shop window, ready and up for sale. The barcode is meant to punctuate that.
I believe that as an artist I am drawn towards work which can cause the viewer to experience and see the obvious in a different light, in this case I have tried to create imagery which hopefully will ask the viewer to what levels change is necessary, or perhaps, we can retain some of what makes us the unique experience that we are. |
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