There’s just one day left of the 14th Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. It is morning, so the area is awash in schoolchildren and college students. “Most of my friends come here to click pictures with the installations,” says Parul Kaur, who attends a Mumbai-based design institute, “but since we are art students this is a good place to learn.”
Art is the visual focus of Kala Ghoda this year. The first sight a visitor is likely to see is a rich golden Volkswagen Beetle composed of scrap. The scrap was collected during clean-up drives by the “Think Blue” team of Volkswagen. Judging by the number of camera-clicks, this is the most-photographed installation here.
Next is an array of installations to highlight the problems facing contemporary society. The environment seems to take the lead. Take for example Arzan Khambatta and Brinda Chudasama Miller’s work, Amazing. It is a maze made of used Bisleri bottles. The work is supposed to convey the message that recycling is important.
Another installation, Rearing Horse by Sukant Panigrahy, depicts an environment that is beautiful only because of recycled materials. It is built entirely of scrap metal, cycle tyres, twine, plastic rings and paper. In Flower: Blossom by Samir Raut and Siddhesh Kadam, plastic bottles arranged like flowers hang from a tree. Next is Big Catch by Parag Tandel, which is about the urban waste that is dumped into water bodies. Tandel shows fish, with crushed bottles inside their bellies, caught in a fishing net. Big Catch captures the scarcity of fishes in creeks around Mumbai.
Corruption, a hot topic, has not escaped the net. NGO volunteers are urging visitors to vote out corrupt politicians in Mumbai’s upcoming municipal elections, and there are installations on this subject. Under the Table by Vikram Arora, for example, strikes at the root of corruption, government officials. It depicts a table turned upside down and covered with a black cloth. This is supposed to be a comment on under-the-table dealings.
FDI in retail, another hot topic, is reflected in Handcart by Prakash Bal Joshi and Amisha Mehta. This work is in the form of a handcart with a man’s image hanging from a pole. FDI, it suggests, will threaten Indian workers’ livelihoods.
There are more serious issues, too, such as the perils of smoking, of unprotected sex, superstition, malnutrition and discrimination. Installations cover them all. From Kathputali by Vandana Somprakash on gender discrimination, to an installation by the child welfare NGO CRY which has spoons dangling from poles to depict malnourishment, to Blind Faith, which represents a man’s face covered by the iron mask of superstition, all of the artwork at Kala Ghoda has a message to convey.
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Some have exceptionally graphic imagery. Smoking Kills is an ashtray made of human bones with fake blood dripping from the ends. In this “ashtray” are cigarette butts with the warning notice, “No Smoking”.
Youth and technology go easily together. Well-known painter Paresh Maity’s Fading Away tries to capture the loss of classical sounds in society. It consists of loudspeakers piled up on a vehicle and gathering dust. More amusingly, Chat-in Denims by KSR Design Studio uses popular chat lingo short forms as patterns inscribed on denim: BTW, ASAP, BRB and more.
What about the crowd? “The crowds keep increasing every year. The situation is almost out of control in the evenings,” says a police constable deployed here. Evenings are not the best time to visit Kala Ghoda, however, and not just because of the extra crowds. The area is dimly lit, which reduces the effect of most of the art installations.
For visitors not interested in art, there is shopping. You can buy Kashmiri dresses, Madhubani paintings, handicrafts from across India, and much more.
The Mumbai Police stall is particularly interesting. Though it attracts little attention, it displays beautiful photographs and paintings by police personnel. It captures the different moods of the city through the eyes of its policemen and -women.
For children there are stalls like that of KEC Green Games, devoted to games made of recycled materials. At a pottery workshop, eight-year-old Juhu schoolboy Karan Gupta says, “The potter was very patient with me. It was fun.”
Despite the hustle and bustle, one leaves Kala Ghoda satisfied and yearning for more.