SEP 19 – OCT 26, 2014.
Special Project Space
POI/ भारत के लोग (POI standing in for People of India with a delicious vernacular sound to it –poi like oi) is artist Archana Hande’s response to the Museum exhibition The Doubled Frame: Interrogating Identity, in the Kamalnayan Bajaj Special Exhibitions Gallery. The latter exhibition draws from the Museum’s collection of rare books, photographs, paintings and prints to essay areading of how an Indian identity was constructed in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries by theBritish. Using the Museum collection as the frame of reference Hande creates a topography of images both contemporary and historic that emerge like ghosts and disappear in a shroud that is actually a mosquito net, ephemera from the past seeking to inhabit a tangible form in the here and now.
The artist speaks of her interest in the idea of how identity has no origin and is a constantly shifting ontological construction that changes with each passing moment. However she explains that the human need for security and certainty prevails and we are co-opted into believing that which others wish us to believe. The issue of what is authentic, what is pure and original as a cultural construction is questionable and difficult to substantiate as the very act of practice in the present mediates and changes the original
Hande uses the idea of a mosquito net, a British import now used ubiquitously in India, as the protective layer which encloses the ephemeral images of the hundreds of types of people which she has sourced both from her own personal collection and from the Museum. She speaks of a semiotics of identity, signifiers which become codes of connection or disharmony. “This language is performed through a documentary practice which transforms the original idea in its very practice,” she says. Using video, assemblage, popular imagery and sounds to create an immersive experience the artist asks us to reflect on who we are and how we have come to see ourselves
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Artist Archana Hande & Curator Tasneem Zakaria Mehta conducted a public walk-through of the exhibition, reflecting on the issues of the representation of identity.
Free, open to all tours of the exhibition in English, Hindi and Marathi were conducted by the Museum’s curatorial team every Sunday from September 19 – October 26, 2014.
This workshop encouraged an exploration of the ways in which the people of India were documented in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Then turning their gaze to contemporary, urban Mumbai and recalling the popular People of India charts, participants aged 8 and above, drew, decorated and documented the people of the city as they see and encounter them today. Who are Mumbai’s people, and what are their occupations in the 21st century? Who would you show - a movie star, bus conductor, cricketer, dabbawalla or doctor? How would they dress and what props would they hold?
The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai City Museum seeks to serve the community as an Institution dedicated to excellence in cultural education through exhibitions and unique visual and intellectual media
An Institution of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. Supported by the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. Restored by INTACH, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Udyan and Zoo (Rani Baug),
91/A, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road,
Byculla East Mumbai 400027 India
T: +91 22 23741234
10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Closed on all Wednesdays and select public holidays.
