A picture of two-wheelers in Delhi, part I, 2008

Although in Delhi it is illegal for more than two people to be on a two-wheeler it takes place everyday all over the city. This in itself is an interesting indication of the amount of influence the state has over the everyday lives of individuals in 'developing' countries as opposed to those countries that have been deemed 'developed'. The ways in which people are capable of acting as a law unto themselves spells out a different idea of freedom.

I became enthralled in the ways in which people’s bodies engaged with one another on these two-wheelers. It seemed to raise a whole range of issues relating to the different degrees of physical contact and intimacy taking place on these two-wheelers amidst the whirling public streets of Delhi. There was this constant unveiling of these binary sort of dynamics that connected this real beauty that existed between people (aesthetically as well as emotionally) and the inherent danger of motorcycles and people and traffic.

Furthermore, underlying all this remained these subtle but ever present tones of trust and dependency, as they existed and developed between friends, lovers, married couples, children, parents, inlaws, work associates, neighbours and all those sharing a two-wheeler in one way or another. However an undeniable sense of machismo (otherwise understood as mardangi in Hindi) also creeps in, especially when coupled with the fact that on the streets of Delhi women are repeatedly on the back seat.

These photographs beautify a very normal and everyday occurance. As visual treats, so to speak, the images offer a different way of viewing the world around us while also being underwritten by a series of more serious concerns.

While this is more of an ongoing work consisting of various forms of public distribution – at present I have glued the images to walls in places around Delhi, within a close but safe vicinity to roads, where pedestrians (and the public) become the viewer and the images can be seen in relation to the environment they sprung from – places where the 'real' content of each image is seen passing by each minute.

These photographs have been taken just shortly after the works were glued to the wall. During each and every installation process a predominately male crowd gathered almost instantly....while this sort of 'spectacle' is fine and to some degree expected I do not see the 'crowd' as being the defining element of the work. Where this work really lives, is when I walk away and the crowd and hype disperse. Maybe then one person walking past has something catch their eye, it is these photographs, and then they turn and stop for a minute and start to piece together the story of what these images might tell.

A picture of two-wheelers in Delhi, part II, 2008

Sydney exhibition

In October 2008 A picture of two-wheelers in Delhi ventured from the street into the gallery space, as part of the 2008 Fauvette Laureiro Travelling Artist Scholarship Finalist Exhibition, in the Sydney College of the Arts Galleries, Australia.

Initially I was nervous about how to move a work that was so specific to the streets of Delhi into a gallery in Sydney, without the images, and the work itself, simply becoming 'pretty pictures from a foreign place'. At this time, I was in Delhi, and India's 62nd celebration of Independence from British colonial rule was drawing near. When I was initially developing the way in which A picture of two-wheelers in Delhi would be publicly distributed/exhibited in Delhi I had toyed with the idea of buying advertising space in the newspapers themselves, or placing the images as loose leaflets within newspapers which were often rich with stories concerning the roads and traffic. But in the end these options were too expensive, and they weren't really specifically relating to the 'streets from which the images came'.

However, India’s 62nd celebration of independence from British colonial rule, presented the opportunity to extend on this question of freedom so central to the initial project, while also contextualising the images for an un-familiar viewer. As a result the images from A picture of two-wheelers in Delhi were placed amidst newspapers from India's Independence Day, (15 August, 2008). Juxtaposed beside articles, headlines, image captions and advertising the images gently disturb the structure of the mainstream media, challenging the relationship between what is conventionally reported and what is not, allowing two often disparate narratives to converge, and individual responses and meanings to flourish. The newspapers themselves can be downloaded as full pdfs from Sarai's online media project Typos in the Writing on the Wall.

View of video projection from the installation, Sydney College of the Arts Galleries, 2008.

Upon entering the installation the above video was projected on a free standing wall. It illustrated a scene of the images in Delhi. It was a still image, but the man looking back from the right corner and the nature of the projection implied a sense of movement. On the opposite side of that wall was the scene below. The newspapers were printed on pillows and the space was created to allow people to spend time reading the newspapers, looking-up-close and personally at the pictures, the stories, reflecting and drawing out the complexity and multiplicity of embedded meanings.

Installation view, Sydney College of the Arts Galleries, 2008.

All visual documentation of the Sydney installation is courtesy of Keith Clarke.