Recycle Trip

A new breed of elites has elevated ‘recycling’ from just another word that made a lot of sense in an ideal world,to a buzzword that spells ‘cool’. And naturally recycling has found interpretations in more ways than we thought it ever would. The most recent being an exhibition titled Re-Claim/Re-Cite/Re-Cycle. The exhibition that put together more than 30 works in a variety of media like videos,digital prints,water colours,drawings,photographs and paintings,tries exploring the ramifications of the word recycling. The material implications of recycling take a backseat in this exhibition curated by Bhavna Kakar,where artists try finding how ideas,cultural motifs,values and even human memory keep coming back in life. Like for example Sharmila Samant’s saree,an installation made from cold drink bottle crowns. Samant uses crowns from products churned out by the Coca Cola company. You might want to look at her ambitious installation as a representation of ideas which recur in different social strata with different implications. While Coke is essentially packaged as an ‘elite’ brand,it is received with varying degrees of enthusiasm and fascination across class divisions. The saree too is also something that lends itself fabulously to the class dialogue in the country. “The saree took me four months to create; the process was elaborate,from collecting crowns from bars where I lived in Amsterdam to sorting,washing and drying them,” says Samant.

Chittrovanu Majumdar’s installation also catches you eye not just because its size and complicated appearance,but also because the installation is not complete without sound. A complicated machinery that resembles a column of pipes that end in trumpet like structures,the work is complemented with music that compile the sounds of various religious processions we spot on Kolkata streets. Rajesh Ram’s Jahan Dhad Wahan Ghar makes an interesting use of books in his work. The framework of a house is made by cutting strips from whole books and is done up with pencil butts.

The exhibition is on at the Bose Pacia till November 15