[En]counters: Talking Sites in the City of Extremes is a Mumbai Festival public art project that will take place from 3 to 9 January,followed by a gallery exhibition from 5 to 14 February 2010.
This project is curated by ArtOxygen, a Mumbai-based contemporary art organization. It has been organized as part of the Mumbai Festival andin collaboration with The Viewing Room Gallery.
The city and some of its most meaningful sites will be lived and interpreted by the works of five Indian artists, who will carry out site-specific actions and installations at Haji Ali Dargah, Crawford Market, CST Station, Leopold Café and Bandra Bandstand.
Bidyut Singha, MSC Satya Sai, Neil Dantas, Pradeep Mishra and Uday Shanbhag will interpret these sites as places of [en]counters – as both points of meeting and clash, two opposing elements that define Mumbai’s identity and soul. The artists’ open cages, love seats, offering of caps, speaking metal detectors, and walking portraits of commuters will be the product of this coming together and clashing of people, cultures and classes, manifested in this relationship between artist, site and people living in it.
Educators Dr. Marie Fernandes, Prof. Jeroo Mulla, Dr. Ruby Maloni, Dr. Usha Raman and Dr. Varsha Shirgaonkar – will also hold on-site lectures on contemporary issues that will address the artworks within the context of a larger cultural and social discourse.
The outcomes of each site-specific will then be collected within the space of a gallery: in [en]counters – Outside In, the outside will be literally shifted inside, to bring the salty odor of the city to its white-washed walls. Along with the artworks, the visual impressions of photographers Binaifer Barucha, Claudio Maffioletti, Vaydehi K,, and film-maker Anshul Pandey.
The objective of [en]counters is to spread awareness on contemporary arts practices by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to understanding the city and to create a healthy synergy with educators, artists, students and various local communities.
