Timeme Mohanty, a three-year-old boy in Delhi, struggled to pedal his bicycle in a circle for days. When he finally succeeded, he yelled: “I rescued speed altogether.”
His father, the artist Paribartana Mohanty, thought this was an absurd statement, and hence, an apt title for his solo show, now on view at the Delhi gallery Shrine Empire. The exhibition comprises 12 large paintings and three moving-image works, produced during eight years in which Mohanty documented and researched the demolition of the Kathputli art colony. “All demolitions, at least for me, are absurd acts,” the artist says.
Forced evictions and demolitions targeting marginalised communities for “redevelopment” are not new in India. One such case was the Kathputli colony, a slum cluster in west Delhi, which had a rich history spanning decades. Known as one of the world’s largest settlements of street performers—puppeteers, acrobats, magicians and musicians—large parts of the colony were razed by late 2017 as part of a redevelopment drive.
Residents claimed due process was not followed and that the displacement destroyed their livelihoods. According to Mohanty, many have since resettled in other slums in west Delhi.
The term “bulldozer injustice”—the suggestion that the bulldozing of homes is being employed as form of extrajudicial punishment—has become closely associated with demolitions in India, according to civil and human rights groups. Over the past four years under the Bharatiya Janata Party government, the homes of Muslims in several states ruled by the party have been demolished following protests against communal violence or episodes of communal violence. Authorities have denied this targeting, and claimed that the demolitions only aim to remove illegal encroachments.
The exhibition's paintings are mounted on objects found amid demolitions, including glue cans and plastic
Courtesy of Shrine Empire
Cultural theorist Santhosh Sadanandan, who has written on Mohanty’s work, describes it as a counter-visual archive. “In a nation obsessed with image management, where beautification serves as a proxy for governance… the slum, the ruin, the dust, does not disappear,” he says.
Most paintings in I Rescued Speed Altogether focus on the objects and landscapes left behind after demolitions—stationery, old toys, half-destroyed houses and smoke—with some works even mounted on such objects. Human figures are absent from the canvases. Instead, in front of one painting hangs a life-sized metallic outline of a man, a stark emblem of the people displaced from these sites.
Mohanty spent eight years working on this project, which uses impressionist as well as pointillist techniques. He thinks it is easy for the public to forget the existence of the erased space, and in taking years to complete his work, has tried to slow down time to bear witness. “Each dot is kind of like pedalling a circle,” he explains, once again referencing his son.
Mohanty began approaching galleries with the work in 2017, but says he was often told they were not “interested in demolition”. Shrine Empire, a private gallery in Delhi’s upscale Defence Colony, signed him earlier this year.
“As a gallery, I think we've been very focused on the contemporary voices who are bringing out the issues of now,” says the gallery’s co-founder, Anahita Taneja. “It’s important to bring those voices forward.”
Taneja says that certain subjects may not appear saleable, but that they grow on people and collectors. “We’ve sold his works—it's gone to institutions, collections; it's gone to some great collections,” she says.
