Support: Khoj International Artists Association, New Delhi, 2008-09
For this six-week residency at Khoj, we developed an art project through dialogue and the collection of personal narratives with communities of migrant workers in the neighbourhood of Khirki, an ‘urban village’ in south Delhi. These communities subsist on daily-wage earnings in small workshops and factories, as construction labourers, as artisans. Though vulnerable and deprived, migrants remain a crucial demographic variable within the rapidly expanding and impersonal cosmopolitan ethos of the ‘global city’ that Delhi aspires to become. As evidenced by their stories, the migrant working class is subject to various powerful modes of hybridity and alienation, even while the city enlarges these communities’ frames of reference, deconstructs small town and rural prejudices, offers a range of new affiliations, and new possibilities of personal freedom.
Productions:
Installation with handkerchiefs. Designs made on handkerchiefs were done by two embroidery workshops in Khirki village. Visitors to the show were invited to pickup these handkerchiefs in exchange they could keep any of their belongings.
Billboard on the road side.
Paar Nazar Ke/Beyond the Line of Sight (PDF)
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