dookan 1

This is part of a recent series of work “One-way Street” I am doing in multimedia (siporex, metal, tube, light and other). These works are based on my observations of places and people particularly certain professions which are part of our everyday. Apart from that, these are professions that are generally passed on in a glance as something insignificant and outdated. These shops have remained from the dawn of early modernity in India with some upgrading once in a while. But with the commercialization of every aspect of our life, these seem to be nearly obsolete these days. These are probably the last remains of the ruins of the early modernity in the urban and semi-urban centers of India. My attempt has been in creating the near exact of the shops which I frequent for one reason or the other. The inability to intervene yet the cordial bond I have developed with these people and their places of the profession is what my works are all about. Shown as ruins of a ghost town abandoned, they are relics of our living present. They though evoke a sense of nostalgia also, are more about the living present than about an imagined past.