'I think therefore graffiti...." at Guild, Mumbai

This interesting group show at Mumbai’s Guild gallery is a unique initiative that involves artists and public. The participating artists including Apnavi Thacker, Atul Dodiya, Baiju Parthan, Balaji Ponna, Bose Krishnamachari, Gigi Scaria, G . Iranna, Justin Ponmany, Kiran Subbaiah, K P Reji, Mithu Sen, Prajakta Potnis, Rakhi Peswani, Riyas Komu, Sathyanand Mohan, Shreyas Karle, Sumedh Rajendran, T V Santhosh, Vishal Dar, Ved Gupta and Vivek Vilasini mostly worked late in the nights for this project.

During the tenure of this show public participation will be sought for graffiti on the gallery wall. The same will be hosted on the site thus disseminating this public participation. Elaborating on the purpose of the show, a press release states:

"Who designs, beautifies, creates our cities, our roads, gullies, pavements, parks, markets, and other public spaces? And who is entitled to use these spaces, maintain them, live in them? Who is responsible towards the safety of these spaces? Who controls them? In the larger matrix of these and many other unanswered questions, remains the public sphere, the street culture, the physical space of day to day living and commuting in large metropolitan cities. These spaces, unofficially, also house enumerable migrants who 'compromisingly' arrive to the cities everyday...holding those dreams that they are unable to realize within the contexts they leave behind."

In the utter chaos of our everyday existence, the physical meets the mental; the city meets the individual, and the public and private merge. A chaotic realm of visual experiences, this ‘everyday’ is a transient mass – of various visual instances, which can become ‘incidents’ for the common imagination.

The artists, through their praxis, have attempted to immortalize, and perhaps, have even essentialized an agency to help us frame these nonchalant instances. It's the ‘voice’ of the street vendors, rickshaw drivers, the drugged beggars, the workers, the prostitutes, and paanwallahs that appear the most inaudible to us. Even while we try to follow each other’s language, the difference of appearances tend to keep the physical distances intact. This is what forms the crux of this interesting artistic venture.