[En]counters: Land of Mine | Public Art Projects

[En]counters: Land of Mine revolves around the idea of land in the city of Mumbai and its various declinations of territory, ground, soil, landscape, and heritage. In particular, we will explore how notions of space and identity, borders and sharing, possession and cohesion, strife and solidarity, neglect and appropriation come to the surface in the city’s everyday life and define its social environment.

The city, its development and future appears hopeless. Yet what remains fascinating are its people and the “networks of assistance” – as Suketu Mehta puts it – become its driving force, its backbone. Through installations, urban interventions and performances, a group of 10 artists will explore this point of intersection between the vertical development of urban structures and the horizontal expansion of social relations.

Homeland
Artist: Pradeep Mishra | Performance
January 7, 2012 | 8.30 am – 11.00 am
Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai

Mishra will build a symbolic shelter, a vital space within the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivali. The installation, which explores how the natural environment and human feelings are intertwined in a pristine relationship, will be made by digging a circle in the ground covered with rose petals. By coupling natural materials, Mishra suggests subtle ways to blend with natural spaces. Every Mumbaikar has a vision of a utopic living space, and Mishra gives shape to his dream home, at the same time shelter and motherly womb. However, the house can never be inhabited, much like the dream itself that never materializes. Along with the installation, a nature trail led by the Bombay Natural History Society and a workshop with students is organized.

How to Milk the Holy Cow
Artist: Uday Shanbag | Performance
January 7, 2012 | 4.30 pm
Kamdhenu Mall, Andheri, Mumbai

Taking inspiration from the recent case of the Kamdhenu commercial centre in Andheri, built on an area initially meant to be used for recreational public use, the artist will actually perform the milking of a holy cow. By juxtaposing a traditional icon to a contemporary construction, the project intends to be an explicit yet ironic critique to the many cases of land misuse regularly appearing on local press and points out the distance existing between shared values and individuals’ interests.

Bulldozer Yatra
Artist: Mansi Bhatt | Yatra and Performance
January 8, 2012 | 12.30 pm to 5.00 pm
Borivali to Azad Maidan, Mumbai

Seated within a bulldozer, Bhatt will disguise herself and begin her journey from Borivali towards South Mumbai. On the way, she will stop at selected locations that have been redeveloped and hand out a certificate of thanks to developers. By using a bulldozer, a sign of virility, and an androgynous costume, Bhatt will comment on stereotypical notions of masculinity and gender. She will conclude her yatra at Azad Maidan. From this symbolic place of protest and freedom, she will dig a patch of earth and place herself in the same spot, inviting passersby to cover her with soil. The action is a satirical remark on the nature of the city and how difficult it is for people to find and claim spaces to live in. Is individual space only possible upon death?

Ghar/Home
Artist: Anupam Singh | Workshops and Installation
January 9, 2012 | 10.00 am to 5.00 pm
Kharghar, Navi Mumbai

Ghar / Home by Anupam Singh aims to explore the dreams/ideas of a home and the aspects of security, permanency, land, shelter, comfort and belonging associated to it that we all carry within us. Where and what is a home? How do we associate with the idea of home through our own experiences of migration? How does this city become our home? In this project, the artist explores the many experiences of migration and the human need to belong and settle. The participants will be invited to a brick kiln in Navi Mumbai to transfer their drawings on the raw bricks which will be baked later, thus having their drawings or writings permanently on it.

In/Out
Artist: Justin Ponmany | Performance
January 12, 2012 | 2.30 pm
Juhu Junction, Mumbai

This project is an interrogation into the emotional ties people attach to their homeland by focusing on the nomad – a character that lives on the margins, without attachments in an in-between state. In an almost comical allusion to the ‘old man’ or the ‘scarecrow’, Ponmany will parade the streets of the city, carrying with him a prototype of this drifter who becomes a character in the artist’s performance. By mimicking the behavior and actions of actual beings that live on the periphery of this city, Ponmany positions his protagonist as a city hero, a liberal recluse with no strings attached living in a wandering condition, on the fringe of society and unaffected by social rules and conventions.

Oasis
Artist: Sharmila Samant | Speculative Model for Gardens
January 13, 2012 | 11.30 am
St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai

A continuation of the developmental work that the artist has been undergoing with the communities of a slum in Annabhau Sathe Nagar (Mankhurd), the artist will speculate on a garden at the site, taking into account the very cloistered environment in this site. Irrigating the garden through four underground wells built during her previous project, the garden space will provide not just fresh produce but will also involve the community on issues related to self-sustainability. The project also aims to provide a model to the dwellers on how urban living spaces can be utilized – not as garbage dumping grounds or sewage deposits – but how they can be transformed into places of beauty as well.

Walking the Jungle
Artist: Prajakta Potnis | Performance
January 13, 2012 | 10.30 – 12.30 pm
Kandivali Station Skywalk, Mumbai

The artist will draw white-sand made lines and posters demarcating and indicating areas in the city where public and private, individual and collective use of space overlaps and clashes. While the work maps out how much of public space is appropriated for private use, it also questions developmental projects by urban planning bodies of the city. The area selected by Potnis overlooks a newly built and vacant skywalk. Clearly, the excessive spending on public infrastructure and outright failure is an illustration that what might work in one city, doesn’t in another. Mumbai’s developers and decision makers need to resolve infrastructural woes internally – by considering the social, cultural, economic fabric of the city itself. In a more playful tone, Potnis will show how people of Mumbai are so used to zigzagging on the streets, where footpaths are converted for commercial use leaving narrow roads for people, cars and animals!

Right to Open Spaces
Artist: Vijay Sekhon | Performance and Street Actions
January 14, 2012 | 3.30 pm
St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai

This is a collaborative performance with theatre activist, Manjul Bharadwaj and students from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. The actions will take the form of street interventions exploring notions of open space and its social, economic, political, historical implications. The performances will comment on how land previously allocated for open spaces have been misappropriated and is an attempt to spark off a public campaign to re-claim lost spaces.

Bombay Dowry (Aaiji chya jivavar Baiji Udar)
Artist: Tushar Joag | Performance
January 14, 2012 | 4:30pm to 5.00pm
Gateway of India to Radio Club, Mumbai

Joag will replicate a matrimonial procession on Mumbai’s streets, an inherent feature of the city’s culture. The procession makes reference to the historical inception of the city – Bombay was gifted by the Portuguese as dowry and subsequently leased to the East India Company. The work is an appropriation that illustrates how today land is still gifted away to builders by charity acts that benefit only the upper classes and further marginalizes the bulk of the city. In the procession, one square foot of soil from different localities of Mumbai with the price tags of the prevailing property rates will be carried as dowry. Joag incorporates popular festivities and rituals into his performance as a way to mask the political potency of his works.