Identity Crisis?

a walk — this is what she calls An Exercise in Trust.

The exhibition,curated by Vidya Shivadas,Bhooma Padmanabhan and Julia Villasenor who work with the Vadehra Art Gallery,is intended to expand the parameters around art. “The show investigates issues of identity,territory,gender,environment,race and nationality. Though the works of all these artists are thematically diverse,they pursue art that is deliberately critical of these issues,” says Shivadas.

Gupta also has a soundless video piece that consists of a flash animation of memory drawings of the Indian map made by common people. Desire Machine,(Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya),on the other hand,uses footage of attacks in Assam to highlight violence in the North-east in Daily Check-Up. “Our work addresses the silence over the issues of insurgency in the North-east,” says Jain. A series of three photographs captures Mansi Bhatt performing as three middle class Indian men while Praneet Soi has painted two intriguing murals on-site and Tushar Joag,in his inimitable style that takes off from comic book art,has presented two poster-paintings. As a result,the exhibition throws up several ideas in a manner that is both engaging and thoughtful.

For Shah,performing An Exercise in Trust was an interesting experiment. She has also carried out this performance in China. “Each walk has been very exciting. I’ve visited monuments like the Qutub Minar and Humayun’s tomb,seeing through the eyes of the people who led me there,” says Shah describing how she remains blindfolded for the whole day,except during toilet and meal breaks. “The idea is to put my safety in the hands of others. While the physical surrender is quite easy,it is the emotional and psychological bit that I find difficult,” says Shah.Soi’s mural is inspired by media images that he collects: “I’ve been looking at images of bombings across the world,often by putting myself in the condition of the injured and the traumatised. I place myself in these situations,subjecting myself to intrusions by security cameras,terror attacks and finally distortion by media,” says Soi about the mural which uses distorted images.

Desire Machine also presents a video installation titled 75/25 which explores the folk tradition of betting in the North East,based on numbers and dreams. “If you dream of a woman swimming then you bet on the number 75 and if you dream of a cow it’s 25 and so on,” explains Madhukaillya. The exhibition will be held till

November 25. Contact: 65474005/06.