Art before take-off
By Anindita Ghose 14 March 2014
Vogue gets a tour of Mumbai airport's 3-kilometre art walk at the T2 terminal from curator Rajeev Sethi
What attracted noted scenographer and curator Rajeev Sethi to designing the three-kilometre long Jaya He art walk at Mumbai airport's new T2 terminal was GVK managing director Sanjay Reddy's mandate: "Build an art museum so captivating that passengers wouldn't mind giving their flights a miss."
A 'public' museum like no other
While there are a number of airports around the world that have made space for art museums, including Paris and Amsterdam, 65-year-old Sethi, who received the Padma Bhushan in 1985 for his work promoting Indian culture and heritage overseas, is chuffed that the Mumbai airport is the largest of them all. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Chicago-based architects behind the Burj Khalifa in Dubai drew inspiration from India's national bird, the peacock, for the architecture of T2, making it something of an art and design wonder.
The art walk is presently accessible only to those with an international air ticket, but there are plans to open it up for school tours in the near future.
Navigation is essential
Of the 7,000 planned art works, only about 60 per cent are presently up. Still, with a majority of the works packed on a continuous wall, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the mish-mash of artistic styles -- ranging from 'found' artefacts such as heritage wooden doorways to conceptual installations by young contemporary artists like Charmi Gada Shah and Sharmila Samanth.
We recommend you make use of the information kiosks placed at intervals to decipher the different thematics such as 'India Greets' or 'Global India'. They not only have a map charting all the artworks, they also carry historical and production details of each of the pieces.
As a scenographer, Sethi is more interested in the overall experience than a neatly packaged introduction to the history of Indian art. So, for instance, in the arrivals lounge, tribal Gond art works shine alongside lenticular prints by the contemporary artist Baiju Parthan.
If like us, you want to do the art immersion without skipping your flight, read on for our overview of the must-see pieces.
1. Recycled Mumbai by Akshay Rajpurkar
The aerial map of Mumbai that artist Akshay Rajpurkar ekes out of waste material draws our eyes to familiar parts of the city, much like it drew Rajpurkar to Lower Parel, Dharavi and the flea market of Chor Bazaar, in a quest for materials. Fashioned from discarded buttons, microchips and circuits, Rajpurkar's large-scale installation builds upon the pixellated image of Mumbai as seen on Google Earth.
Touché by Rajeev Sethi and artists trained at the Chandigarh College of Art
In the 'India Elemental' section, the element of air is depicted by a 15 x 8 feet wide and five feet high sculpture of the Hawa Mahal, which takes on the architectural shape of a pagdi, or turban, in tribute to its geographic location in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Touché retains the protruding jharokhas and jaalis of its inspiration.
The entire process was executed by a team of artists who trained together at the Chandigarh College of Art, working under the close supervision of Sethi.
Wellness Flower by Rabindra Behera
In the 'India Greets' section is one of the largest patachitra panels anywhere in the country. A traditional rendering of the lotus on dried palm leaves, this particular work is exceptionally large, spanning 9 ½ feet x 9 ½ feet. The artist has created "a large thousand-petal lotus, each petal contains the image of an apsara, the celestial dancers and handmaidens to the gods."
Leaning in for a closer inspection, one notices that despite the similarity in their attire, each figure is different. Some of the nymphs play flutes, cymbals or drums; some are depicted as though dancing with abandon, and others others stand still, their palms clasped in greeting.
Resilient—Resonances of a City by Charmi Gada Shah
Charmi Gada Shah creates miniature building structures, which evoke the nostalgia and loss associated with the demolition of old structures. Her installation at T2 is on a much larger scale than her usual work. It took a year and a number of exploratory drawings, models, and discussions with the curatorial and design team to detail her initial concept of a work based on the abandoned buildings in and around the Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar, where she lives and works.
Birds of Paradise by Rajeev Sethi and Bhajju Shyam
"Viewing a good image begets good luck," or so the saying goes among the Gond tribal community of Madhya Pradesh. Conceptualised and directed by Rajeev Sethi, Birds of Paradise reflects his profound belief in the synergy of the traditional and the modern.
Sethi and his team of designers collaborated with the celebrated Gond artist Bhajju Shyam to create animated images of airplanes depicting various stages of flight in the Gond style. The Gond artist's innovative interpretations of the mythical udan khatola fuse the forms of airplanes, helicopters, animals, and birds to create fantastical and whimsical flying vehicles.
Heptad, the 7th by Sharmila Samant
Sharmila Samant offers a powerful critique of the challenges mass-produced consumer goods have on artisanal and cottage industries as well as of the homogenising effect of commodification. An installation of seven rotating pillars composed of used bottle caps—seven for the Saptamatrikas, the seven Hindu mother goddesses and for the seven islands of Mumbai—Heptad, the 7th juxtaposes the aspirations of a rising bourgeoisie with those of the working class, notions of waste against recyclable materials, and the massive scale of assembly line production against handcrafted goods.
Collective Nouns by Manjunath Kamath
Inspired by the fables of the Panchatantra, Manjunath Kamath's work is simultaneously humorous and serious. Painted images from a variety of sources as well as the accompanying animated video works, are mounted on oval frames, emulating traditional ganjifas (playing cards) of different sizes. While there is no specific narrative, through a repetition of motifs, linkages are carefully orchestrated following a thread from one frame to another.
Trash, Fash, Bash by Vivan Sundaram
Building on his 2007 multimedia exhibition titled Trash this new work, Trash, Flash, Bash, critically examines urbanisation as a contemporary phenomenon, representing the different worlds enveloped within the ever-expanding skin of the city. Working collaboratively with waste pickers, Sundaram sorted through truckloads of garbage, reassembling them into an elaborate, fantastical city in the space of his studio.
Silent Ways by Dilip Chobisa
In the hustle and bustle of an airport that never sleeps, Dilip Chobisa's work offers the viewer a few moments of silent refuge. It gives the viewer a meticulously detailed interior 'magical' world where each object and scene, however mundane, is endowed with poetic meaning. Five different mise-en-scenes disorient the viewer, much like the scene shifting that is going on with the city's architecture. His monochromatic settings throw the varied architectural styles into strong contrast; the views through the windows are equally diverse–skyrises, distant hills, an aerial view–one's eye travels up and down, never knowing where the next quiet corner may take you.
Hope by Baiju Parthan
Wait for that 'magical moment' in Baiju Parthan's work; that moment when the image changes from a taxis or buildings to that of Icarus. On viewing this 36 feet-long lenticular print work, one sees the bustling city of Mumbai with its bikers, commuters, Art Deco buildings and the iconic black-and-yellow Fiat taxi-cabs. As one changes one's position of viewing, the image turns to that of Icarus, an anti-hero from the Greek myth who dared to fly.
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