Art in everyday spaces

Art in everyday spaces
the first pure still-life
born out of need
to live, to grow












what we do
what we think
how we create
how we express

the Bazaar_its representation as Art

the painted painting
the photographed image
the designed space
the theatre AND the stage




it confronts us
not as immediate sight
but as experience

art transcends time
the bazaar is for the moment
a tangible aesthetic
in our intangible times
















"Space by itself
and time by itself
are doomed to fade away
into mere shadows"
- Hermann Minkowski













the bazaar
art, space, time or shadow

the Spice vendors & their displays

In the old days, at Kumily, it was heaps of cardamom and pepper that you passed by as you walked the main street. Today, strings of spice packets make the displays in shops. The spices are the same, the packaging is new.

In the informal sector in the towns and cities in India, one finds a different display each day that you go into the bazaar. In the vegetable and fruits bazaar, sometimes it is only the heap of tomatoes that attract attention. At other times, it is the bananas that hang in bunches that are the most eye-catching. As you walk into the streets around the central core of the vegetable market, you see brass pots that sit outside a shop and on the footpath. There are often aluminium utensils of all shapes that begin to form a screen outside the shop, a “shop window” that is outside the shop.

It’s the quantum of brass or quantum of steel that must fill the display to catch the eye. It is afterwards the nature of the arrangement. So it is with spice vendors. The shop windows are first filled with spices and more spices. They create their own pattern. Glass and plastic are used extensively in urban shopfronts, their transparency making the showcasing of spices and other goods, more attractive. The spices are either in glass jars, in small glass containers or behind a glass front or panel of glass. Often, spices are in small plastic packets that hold in one string, more than ten packets, each with its names written, so that foreign tourists can take these back as “spices from india”

Business spaces in Spice Tourism

Any bazaar must have an array of enterprises that supplement each other. In the town of Kumily, between the spice shops are small restaurants. Some sell Kerala food. Others sell Gujarati and Marwari food. A few eat at the Kerala thali places. Others enjoy being at the Jungle café, that overlooks the forest. Food for buyers and vendors, textiles for the locals, the drug stores, the internet cafes that are tourist necessities and Convenience stores that must sell camera rolls, digital camera transfers and CD writing facilities for recording with ease the traveller experiences.

In the main street, business is good for the retailers for almost eight months in a year. However, the land price here is Rs.6 lakhs/cent. So, a shop can cost upto Rs.6 lakhs to Rs.8 lakhs. This main area is known as Kumily town. A short distance away is Thekkady which has shops that also sell spices. This area is less expensive in terms of land prices. Here, a trader can buy one cent for Rs.4 lakhs. With the establishing of five-star hotels such as Taj Retreat and Spice Village, the shops here sell both spices and crafts at a price higher than on the ‘Kumily town’ bazaar street.

When one looks at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, it is the organic nature of the plan, the ingenuity of the vendors in their marketing strategies and their creativity of displays that lend vibrancy to the spatial experience. In Kumily, it would be good to have a street that is less wide, one that is for pedestrians only, shops that have transition spaces i.e. there is a open space, a semi-enclosed verandah and perhaps an enclosed space within for storage, or those goods that need to be scrutinised carefully or for making a deal with the wholesaler or retail that goes beyond the ordinary.