[Reader-list] Alien Waters, IIC Gallery

[Ravi Agarwal]

Apologies for cross postings

 

You are invited to 
alien waters

 An exhibition of photographic works (2004-2006) by Ravi Agarwal 

 

from October 24 to November 1, 2006, 11 am to 7 pm, daily

IIC Annexe Art Gallery, Lodhi Road, New Delhi

In collaboration with Youthreach and India International Centre

 

associated events

Talking photography: Photographers talk about their practice and engagements with photography. Moderated by Sunil Gupta, photographer and curator, in collaboration with Khoj International Artists' Association. October 24, 4:30 pm to 8 pm.

Photography revisited: Jeet Thayil, Rana Dasgupta, Sarnath Banerjee and Sheba Chacchi speak about their relationship to photographs. October 26, 4:30 pm to 8 pm

The river is in the city's margins. It is very dirty, filthy. The city does not need it any more. Its future is pre-configured, the river is 'dead.' It will now be cleaned but not like a life giving artery, but a sparkling necklace, adorning a new globality of the city. There was a time when the river was its ecology as the city and the river shaped each other. Now the relationship is only with land, which the river holds in its belly. Violent. Thousands of poor are thrown out, for the new stadiums, temples, bridges and pathways their futures uncertain. Death, the predominant Hindu relationship to life in the cycle of rebirth has a timeless resonance as ashes are immersed in the waters. But what will the rebirth be?

The self, seeking to recover a relationship in the new alienation as the river became a muse and metaphor for a search, within and without. The first bird I saw on the riverbank thirty years ago came back and changed my life as I attempted to regain a personal ecology as a photographer/activist. My organic body is now extended by the inorganic body of the city. The river is alive, throbbing in my veins resonating unresolved questions of spirit and sense. The engagement with the triad of the self, the city and the river, becomes a reclamation of the self. I photograph even as I experience other human abandonment. I go back, again and again, endlessly, searching.


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