Photographing Everyday

An exhibition showcasing sixty Polaroid enlargements of mundane moments in a city; moments that are rooted by the quality of being temporary.

The posters and invitation cards were arranged by designer/ artist and incredible human-being, Soraya Taher Merchant

- Collecting Fragments (a mini writeup by me). Pages 1, 2 and 3.
- An article written by Ayesha Matthan for The Hindu newspaper.
- An interview with Rajita Gadagkar for The Bengaluru Pages.
- Opening day pictures.

(These Polaroids were shot between 2003-05)

.2008

Observing the 'Lost Tea Leaves Series'

Why ‘lost’ you may be wondering…

Few years back, at the Alliance Française, I was trying to explain (rather retardedly in French) to one of the French teachers there, the project i had been working on, the past couple of months. (I had been collecting the refuse tea from a tea restaurant called Infinitea in Bangalore, to make works that could be later exhibited in his establishment). In his trying to understand what I had said to him, he related it to something that was very familiar to him, ‘Pain Perdu ’. Literally translated as ‘Lost Bread ’, which is what we know to be as French Toast.

He further went on to explain that the bread that was made a long while back in France, lasted for just for a day before it became hard, crunchy and stale (lost). He described how that for the people to get over this, what they’d do is make it soft by dipping it in a mixture of eggs and milk to fry it into golden brown chunks (slices in American and English cultures).

The more I tried researching about it, the more I realised that each country has their own method of preparation and they all call it by different names. Even the history of ‘French Toast’ may not necessarily belong to the French.

Nevertheless, just the idea of something ready to be thrown away (the abject quality) and it being given second breath to be something different, was what captured me. That people had found a way to waste less bread by preparing it differently.

Talking to my dad about it reminded him of an Arabic desert item he loves called ‘Um Ali’.

My mind kept revolving around the idea that the bread was once ‘lost’ and now reborn. The usage of language to imply history through the word ‘Perdu’ (lost), was an idea I found too appealing to let go of.

The more I thought about it, the more I could relate to what I was doing with the tea leaves. They too, every evening get chucked away in large garbage bags where they will find their way into lorries, the next morning, that lift them away. Instead, the 'Teamen' (as they are called) collected them for me, where i took the leaves and powder back home to dry and stored them to see what would happen over time (eventually to glue them into forms and frame them for display).

But it just wasn’t a simple matter of collecting, drying, storing, pasting and displaying.

Observing its daily decay and experimenting were where the fun laid for me.

14th March 2009 edited (12th March 2011)

Pricking "The Feeling Bubble of Forgetting" (Pre-experiment)

"Over a month back, a friend and I had a discussion on memory, this elusive material that we faced problems recalling on many occasions. As a response to this discussion… or rather as footnotes to our conversation, I decided to sculpt and post a letter to this person utilizing ‘post-it’ paper and correction tape.













In the process of sculpting this letter (using a pen knife), I had made double incisions on the pad, where there had meant to be one solid cut instead. This led to an interesting mistake whose texture I instantly noted as potential to create/ manipulate a space with.

At the time, I had been frequenting Gloria Jean’s Coffees over at 100ft road, Indranagar and was made happy by the staff there who had made me feel welcome.

Unsure of a final outcome, I prepared an informal proposal that I approached GJC with.

The next couple of days were spent speaking to different managers and their superiors, till one day, I had given space to the thought that maybe this wasn’t to happen within their premise.

Just when I was about to start thinking of other places that might fancy the idea, I had received a call which caught me by surprise; Not only were they were very enthusiastic about the project but what was incredibly encouraging about this call was the amount of support the people of GJC were willing to provide.

All I could tell them for certain were the materials that I had planned on using and the space I had my eyes on. What interested me were the elements that I had chosen for my head to play with.

A medium for remembering (post-its) and one for erasing (erasers/ correction tape).

I had, at the time, also been reading ‘Food of the Gods’ by Terrence Mckenna… and this part of the text caught my attention, which I could relate to this experiment and weave into my thoughts;

“ …Tea cleared the way for the popularity of coffee. Their stimulant properties made caffeine in coffee and its close cousin theobromine in tea the ideal drugs for the Industrial Revolution: they provided an energy lift, enabling people to keep working at repetitious tasks that demanded concentration...”

One of my interests in art, lie in the use of everyday materials. That we can look at objects as myriad-purposed materials, rather than as items driven by a singular purpose. Having had the opportunities to have done something like this in Singapore, I am curious to observe public responses (in Bangalore) to projects such as this done in spaces not usually reserved for the arts.

With the visual richness that the window space of GJC provides, I’m looking forward to where the process leads… and sharing it with the people around.

Do drop on by."

This was written about 2 months back

Observing the Pricked Bubble (Post-experiment)

to do