culture 'x'

This is my part of a three year project funded by UKIERI (UK India Education and Research Initiative) and the British Council with a project directive to build an understanding of collaborative work, creating links between the Scottish and Indian education sectors. My practice based research component deals with cultural attitudes and assumptions through the production a series of urban art interventions that explore attitudes and expectations to work found outside of normal art or design environments. The interventions took place in Dehli, India during the spring of 2010 but i've never shown or uploaded until now. 

My street interventions work opens a dialogue with the public - a direct dialogue while installing the work and then a series of installations within a close proximity to each other that explore a loose narrative.      

There is a far more direct and enjoyable interaction that takes place when the paste ups are directly adapted, pasted over, even removed or edited by members of the local community within which they are installed. Natural weathering plays a part also in the embedding of the images. 

        

Two sites were selected – neither is an area which sees tourist Nariana Industrial estate and Karol Bagh a predominantly working class area considered a ghetto by some of my Indian colleagues. The documentation was carried out by my good pal dougi who was also involved in the exchange - all photos © dougi mcmillan

Nariana Industrial estate the primarily industrial area the work met initially with much agitation and a mix of confusion and hostility from the crowds of workers who gathered to watch the installations. Through translation a series of very robust discussions took place and from this it was discovered that the work was interpreted as some kind of competitive advertising and as such seen as unfair competition. 

While no clear message or product was driven by the work the only framework that the workers could clearly understand or relate to was that of commercial visual communication particularly in an industrial area. The series of discussions became very interesting as street arts intentions to utilise public space as well as to subvert contemporary advertising and to communicate directly with the public as well as technically belonging to the public was explored. 

The idea of free art owned by a collective public met with reactions that varied from approval, to astonishment. That said artwork was produced for free and received no financial reward was also met with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief. Once this was absorbed it seemed to allow a much calmer reading and relationship with the artwork. Every single piece of work in Nariana was left intact and allowed to weather into its location, many lasted 3 months or more and were finally “erased” by the monsoon rains and humidity combined.

In Karol Bagh the predominantly working class area the artwork received a far more robust interaction as described earlier the paste ups were read far more intuitively and were censored, modified and altered.  The variety of ways the paper installs were modified depending on the interpretation of the figures and the icons used in the graphics, masks, bones, feathers and headwear met with very different cultural assumptions.

The projects energy and conceptual force, both the performance of installing it publicly and the images communication and messages are always attached to a degree of risk. The absence of a culture of street art was a real obstacle in initial perception and reception however the anarchic nature was greeted openly when it was discovered that the pieces were visual art.

By far the most interesting was when the templegirl figure was modified. Perhaps the very low caste street trader woman who laid out their wares on blankets every day cut the eyes out of the female figure perceiving it as giving the evil eye to their customers and being very bad luck to be associated with. Or a little more disturbing is the thought it is a misogynist act to censor the female figure covering her mouth and removing her eyes. Whoever modified the figure did however leave the figure intact in place! They also covered the bones of the skeletal dogs inwardly curling tails with little stickers mistaking them for the penis of the dogs.

Gaining permissions on an ad hoc basis from the property owners of the sites through the translation services of my translator and very enthusiastic assistant Rishabh Arora.

  

   

It was a thoroughly rewarding experience that leaves an open door for future projects which continue to explore and communicate ideas through this medium which is compelled to state something in and with the city, a mixture of protest, beauty, subversion and examinations of belief.