At Latitude 28’s New Home, Light and Space Bring Art to Life

One of the smaller rooms resembles a living room – bookshelf, sofa, chairs – offering a domestic setting in which Baruah’s woodcut and Das’s smaller dolls demonstrate how art occupies everyday spaces (image: file)

The change of address from their earlier space in Lado Sarai is evidently more than just an act of relocation. Here, it is not just the artworks that capture your attention but the architecture itself. The pieces settle into corners, stretch across walls and pull the room into their orbit. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Dramaturgies of Space, which came to a close recently, brings that dialogue between art and its surroundings to life. Each work, commissioned afresh for this site, approaches the space as a collaborator rather than a backdrop.  The artists whose works are exhibited include Firi Rahman, Salik Ansari, Juhika Bhanjadeo, Chandan Bez Baruah, Waswo X Waswo and Riyas Komu.

“I was keen on working with people who deal with spatial setups and make the work accordingly — those who can respond to space as opposed to space being part of their work,” Kakar said, adding that all participating artists visited the space before starting their work.

Sudipta Das’s work, Threads of Belonging, gazing out of the window. (image: file)

Kakar worked with interior designer and architect Tushant Bansal to design the space from scratch. Unlike many Delhi galleries housed in converted residences, she wanted a space conceived with art in mind. Light was a big factor. Bez Baruah’s large woodcut landscape, Somewhere in Northeast India, stands out as a monochrome centrepiece, when the spotlight from behind the frame gives a view into the minute details. It is an ode to the Forestscapes of his native place, Assam.

A view of the main room of the Latitude 28’s new gallery in Defence Colony in Delhi

Kakar envisioned the gallery as a “vessel in transit”, something designed to evolve, absorb and continually remake itself. The portholes on the blue entrance door evoke the form of a ship — an image of movement, not stasis.

Designing the space became a process of calibrating how the day would move across the walls as the light shifts. The planning extended to furniture and built-ins too. The 10-ft-long bench in the centre of the room has its own spatial connotation. One of the smaller rooms resembles a living room – bookshelf, sofa, chairs – offering a domestic setting in which Baruah’s woodcut and Das’s smaller dolls demonstrate how art occupies everyday spaces. “A bookshelf was very important to me. I wanted to maximize it, so I combined it in a way that I can display art as well,” Kakar said.

Bhavna Kakar, Founder and Owner of Latitude 28, envisioned the gallery as a vessel in transit. The portholes on the blue entrance door evoke the form of a ship (image: file)

Komu, whose works are politically charged, also recreated one of his older pieces for the exhibition. His installation Pillar of Eternal Redemption and Broken Promises occupies one corner of the room. Alongside it are his Orphan Age paintings – oil on canvas works depicting stages of orphanhood. “The installation was not fitting in with the scale of the gallery because it was 11 ft,” Kakar said. “So he spent some time and recreated that to fit the space.”

Waswo X. Waswo’s works from New Myths First Incarnation playfully reimagines mythology. In a black-and-white digital photograph painted with stone and watercolour he shows Lord Krishna riding away on a scooter. Now that’s one way to see things in a different light.