In today’s India, when the mosaic of democracy is slowly being dislodged and its joinery eroded, one cannot help but ruminate about the history of the public institution that is slated to play host to a number of G20 festivities, namely the NGMA, and its association with sculpture in particular. This unstable seat of the sculpture, with its veneer of tiled surface, resonates with the state of our contemporary democracy. Workers installing a sculpture South Extension, New Delhi, September 6, 2023.

This time the sun was directly above my head and the flyover loop that I was negotiating had contract workers, some barefoot, swiftly applying paint on the protective traffic barriers of the lanes. It was noon when I next encountered them on the eve of the G20 summit. I had photographed these just a few days before, at night, when suddenly their base sprouted a water fountain, after years of being surrounded by a green carpet of grass. The inscrutable visage reveals very little, but the carefully worded slogans and accompanying visuals suggest that the next election campaign is well underway.Ī smell that I am familiar with hung in the air of Delhi as I made my way across the city, past the shiny silver globs of steel that dot the green island opposite the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in South Delhi.

What does recapitulation of the architectural wonders of the world, among them the leaning tower of Pisa and the Eiffel tower, nestling in a garden adjacent to Sarai Kale Khan, point towards? What does the consecration of a large Shiva sculpture – not as Shambhu (benign”) or Shankara (beneficent) but as Natraj the cosmic dancer trampling a dwarf – placed outside a conference venue mean?Ĭan the answer be found in the infinity mirror-like multiplication of the prime minister’s visage across billboards, bus stop shelters and every other form of public interface capitalised by the government? Unlike straightforward propaganda, where the stage is set for a hierarchy of relations to be put on display, this redistribution of a singular image at street level, which is viewed by pedestrians and mobile bodies in cars and buses, displays an understanding of liminal placement of images to saturate the mind. Traffic Island opposite Ashoka Hotel, September 5, 2023.

City Island: Collections instaling