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For “Meter Down”, her debut public participatory project, artist Krupa Desai kept it simple. Packaging of jockey underwear from a lingerie store and mobile covers held the apparatus of the project — postcards, pens, and stickers. She then roped in rickshaw drivers at 90 Feet Road in Dharavi. Their vehicles would become the venue and their clients, her test subjects. For “Meter Down” passengers were asked to describe their journey on postcards using text, drawings or stickers. “Through personal responses and conversations that people have when they travel, I wanted to gauge how the city is changing,” says Desai, who says it doesn’t matter what they actually described because it still becomes a record of the times today.
The responses she received vary from the absurd — a person wrote a Valentine’s Day letter — to sincere, where some even drew the landscape they passed by. “There was a person who drew a picture of a man carrying a child on his shoulders at Kalina to give him a view of the aeroplanes on the runway. Others used stickers to construct a story,” says Desai, who has a degree in social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), and is currently a PhD at JNU. This collection of interactions will be on display today at Studio X in Fort, along with documentation of other projects that were part of ArtOxygen, an art initiative that has public transport as its theme.
Growing up in ’90s Mumbai, the artist witnessed the changing landscape of the city, as people moved to the western suburbs. She now sees this being replicated in the eastern suburbs. “The idea for ‘Meter Down’ was to track how areas from Sion to Vikhroli were changing through passengers who travel by autorickshaws. But the autorickshaw drivers I spoke to were not limited by this stretch, and I didn’t want to interfere with their daily business,” says Desai, whose project started on February 13. For the five-day project, the drivers became facilitators, answering any questions passengers had and also, came back with suggestions to improve the design of the postcard holders.
“Meter Down” put out 100 cards and all of them have been filled, surpassing Desai’s expectations. Now, the decoding will begin. The artist says that it’s too early to draw conclusions, but interesting conversations around the postcards have already begun. “One of the participants wrote about how there shouldn’t be rearview mirrors for the backseat of the autorickshaw, which had the drivers discussing for hours. Interestingly, the surveillance camera sticker was used by quite a few people,” says Desai.
The artist is keeping her cynical hat on about it. “Everyone wants to create public art projects today. But it is important to see what comes out of it. We will soon have time to figure it out,” she says.
The results of “Meter Down” along with other projects part of ArtOxygen will be displayed at Studio X, Fort, 6 pm onwards.
kevin.lobo@expressindia.com
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