Gigi Scaria: CITY UNCLAIMED
© Gigi Scaria
City Unclaimed: Artist Statement
I have been engaged with the city of Delhi for over 2 decades. Observing and engaging with Delhi on a permanent day today basis has formed much of my perception of urban spaces in India. The layers of social structures and hierarchies’ one encounters in a single day in Delhi leaves thought for the understanding of a much larger and wider notion called ‘India’. The urban and the rural, the class and cast, religion and practice and the endless list of eccentric and idiosyncratic exchanges of different social groups somehow create its own mystery in any urban space in India. For us ‘modernity’ is a big claim, which has to be approved and contextualized at every stage of any discourse. On the other hand an economically booming India stands with millions of middle class on its side, which constantly erase and redraw the map of India with a completely different set of tools and calculations. The repercussions and resonance of these new voices has also been woven into the urban fabric with variety of architectural and cultural forms. The new construction fever and mall culture could be a result of this phenomenon.
‘City unclaimed ‘ deals with the eccentricities nurtured and watered in a typical urban setting of India largely created and running through the migrant population and its constant ‘pilgrimage’. In its nature each part of the city claims its immediate vicinity but overall lies unattended and unclaimed by any system or logic. It grows and decays by its own logic, assigned by the mood of time and its everlasting nature of permanency if allowed to understand ‘time’ as the only phenomenon un- flickered and static.
© Gigi Scaria