Along the way... - a mobile, public art installation

As an artist, I’m interested in the non-institutionalised artistic practices of India that have the profusion and vibrancy of colour, the force of raw emotion, an endearing quality of naivety and an essence of spontaneity that beautifully meld to create an arresting visual. I’ve always been struck, fascinated and stimulated by this visual language. The interest and wonder for work of this quality has lead me to first and foremost to travel across the country to understand the dynamics of creation, its place in the society, its sources like folklore and mythology.

Over fifteen years, I’ve collected products created for local consumption like educational posters, matchboxes, textiles, knickknacks and photographed images of decorations on trucks, bullock carts and autorickshaws to educate and understand the sensibilities that guide and infuse the creation of these works with such character. This process has laid the ground for my own artistic interventions, which has made me rethink my own skills of fashion and textile design, pattern-making and weaving to find parallels to make studied versions of these indigenous and local crafts.

In my current work, Along the way..., I work with one my most loved expressions – decorative vehicle art. Over the past eight years of living in Bangalore – a major commercial hub – I’ve learnt to appreciate and distinguish the point of origin of these decorations on trucks and other vehicles based on the stylistic choices.  The choice of the patterns, the brush strokes, decorative embellishments, colour, proportion and accessorising, which change based on the region of origin.

This underlying interest alerted me to the other kinds of decorative vehicle art and I began to look at autorickshaw art that is prevalent in Bangalore. I began to photograph the various expressions of this art form and slowly began to learn and teach myself to overarching aesthetic and detailing. I’ve spent the last two years collaborating with executioners known as “liners” of this art practice to create my own autorickshaw art using the inherent qualities of the form but pushing it in content, colour, style and material to create something new.

The major motivation of my artistic practice is to dialogue with the city as well as to stimulate conversation, to draw the city’s attention away from the glitzy promises of modernity to the intimacy of the crafts. Along the way... is a fruition of that desire to converse by playing with the visualness of the autorickshaw in order to allow people to see the form in its exaggerated glory, to be surprised or to talk among themselves.