Flow/Cut: The Fluid City

Speakers: Tasneem Mehra, Jeroo Mulla and Simpreet Singh
Discussants: Claudio Maffioletti, Amrita Gupta Singh and Rajeev Thakker
In collaboration with Art Oxygen and StudioX, Mumbai

Exhibition Preview and Panel Discussion
April 15, 2011 | 6.30 pm
Studio X, Mumbai

The fluid city originated out of the desire to examine the connections between public art and urban spaces. It is a project that investigates the complexities and contradictions generated by the role water plays in Mumbai.

In [en]counters, through a series of installations, interventions, performances and actions carried out by seven Mumbai-based artists, the project explored the possibilities that emerged from the linkages of art practices with human relations and the uncontrollable chaos of the city’s everyday. By urging artists to examine contemporary issues affecting our daily existence, by shifting the function of art from being purely visual to an active process of provocation, we wanted to illustrate how this terrain is an enriching area for experimentation. To show how art can be a vital tool to stimulate people to think, question, react.

Now, Flow/Cut aims at observing how the remaining objects and the produced documentation re-define the institutional space of the gallery, intended no longer as an abstract container, but as a site integrated within the urban fabric. This exhibition is not meant as a collection of the works which took shape during our public project. It does not just provide a representation of what happened in the outside. Rather, by establishing a dialogue between works scrutinizing the social, ethical, economical binaries of water in the city inside the white cube walls, the fluid city intends to crack frameworks, challenge perceptions and stretch the boundaries of the artistic discourse to open ends.

The discussion Of Denial and Desire: The Paradoxes of Water in the City will be held at the opening of the exhibition. As part of the panel, Tasneem Mehta (Director, Bhau Daji Lad Museum), Jeroo Mulla (Head, Dept. of Social Communications Media, Sophia Polytechnic) and Simpreet Singh (Social Activist, Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan) will intervene along with the artists within the context of this project. The discussants for this program are Claudio Maffioletti (Co-Founder, ArtOxygen), Amrita Gupta Singh (Program Director, Mobile Parikh Center) and Rajeev Thakker (Director, Studio X, Mumba).

Artists: Tushar Joag, Pradeep Mishra, Prajakta Potnis, Sharmila Samant, Vijay Sekhon, Uday Shanbhag and Parag Tandel