Art in Urban Spaces

The Bazaars in India are spaces for everyday but they are also places where vendors express themselves through their creative displays, to attract people and to sell goods. This is a form of art perceived not as a "representation" of the real world but as a "way of seeing".

A walk through a traditional Street bazaar can be compared to a walk through a modern Urban environment. Although two people could see the same things at the same time, they might not always do so. In a Bazaar, what might be within the range of vision one moment, might not be, in the next.

If you don't see the hands that make the flower garland at this moment, in the next moment, you see only red and blue plastic buckets. When two of us walk along a street, you experience in one moment the labyrinth of garlands to your right, and I, the brass pots in front of me. The next moment, you see no twirling garland in the making and I see no sunshine on the brass. It was only for the moment and that moment is now gone.

In the Indian City, the urban experience draws from more than just architecture. The streets are also places of exchange. Each vendor finds his own way of displaying the goods and makes a shelter within the public space with materials locally and easily available, with a sensibility very much his own.

There is a pictorial language in the forms that the goods bear individually and collectively and the spaces that are generated between goods and the vendor, between vendor and a building façade and between the vendor, façade and the customer.

There is a temporariness in this creation that depends on the time of the day, the season of the year and the access to public space. Here, the art is functional; it attracts and the wares are sold. It is not the art that sells.

The photographs included here are from a collection that was exhibited at the Urban Visualities Exhibition and Symposium at Dakshinachitra in Chennai from 27Jan – 27Feb 2011

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an Art Installation