German and Indian artists come together to work around rivers in two of the world’s major cities.
Two rivers flowing over 6,000 kilometres apart have become the muse for an art project which begins in Hamburg (Germany) tomorrow and comes to India on November 9. While one, Elbe, which feeds the port of Hamburg, is a controlled river because of its importance to the area’s economy, the other, the Yamuna in Delhi, hardly ever gets a thought from the city which exists around it.
The Yamuna-Elbe public art project, which coincides with the India Week in Hamburg, hopes to get people to rethink their relationship with the river and the ecology it supports. The first step would be to bring people to the river. To achieve this, most of the artworks by Indian and German artists will be installed along the two rivers. “While the Yamuna is really on nobody’s mind in Delhi, Hamburg has maintained the tidal data of its river for each day for the last 100 years,” says artist and environmentalist Ravi Agarwal who is co-curating the project with Till Krause, an artist from Hamburg who also runs an art space, Galerie für Landschaftskunst. “Because of Elbe’s significance to the economy there is now a move to deepen it so that larger boats can come up to the port. But such progress does not answer the question of ecology or tell us whether development also means sustainability,” says Agarwal.
Artist Atul Bhalla’s 12- part series of a photoperformance on the river Elbe poses precisely this question: “What will be my defeat?” In Delhi, the challenge is different — of getting people to experience the river. “About 42 km of the Yamuna flows through Delhi of which only 22 km is polluted. There are large parts of it which are clean and beautifully blue. But nobody knows about them,” says Agarwal. The project hopes to take people on this ‘Blue River Tour’ for which the Delhi government will run special buses.
From November 9 to 23, the riverfront will come alive with installations, music concerts and theatre shows at a small, natural open-air theatre, photography competitions, writing workshops and river walks. The intention is to achieve all this by making the river part of the art. Artist Gigi Scaria will install a five-storey, 25-foot-high fountain which will pump water from the Yamuna and purify it as it is pushed up. “In all, the artwork which is in the works is taking about a month-and-a-half to complete,” says Scaria who plans to build similar fountains on the banks of several of the country’s polluted rivers. “We worship rivers and yet use them to dump sewage. It’s a strange love-hate relationship,” he says.
Delhi-based installation artist Sheba Chhachhi intends to take visitors across the river in specially-altered boats that will be equipped with video projection. As the boats will move from the ghat to the opposite shore, the video will play out the future of the Yamuna. Yet another artist, Asim Waqif, is creating a giant island from the remnants of the pontoon bridge at Raj Ghat. On this he will install a large bamboo and fabric structure which will act like a beacon. Local villagers will also be part of the project through works like that of Atul Bhalla who intends to make small wells connected to the river’s water table. “The artistic and curatorial intention is to urge people not to prejudge the river and dismiss it as dirty,” says Agarwal. “Just come and, for once, experience it.”
