Important Notice

Tushar Joag's body of work offers the viewer "…a world of transformation, disruption and opposition. Employing a sense of epic drama common to his source in comic books, his drawings humourously bespeak the urban environment as at war with itself. Post boxes, street signs and lamp posts assume human features and emerge as mutants and superheroes that variously fly, fall and otherwise battle with each other and unseen forces" (Brian Curtin, Here,... Tushar Joag's body of work offers the viewer "…a world of transformation, disruption and opposition. Employing a sense of epic drama common to his source in comic books, his drawings humourously bespeak the urban environment as at war with itself. Post boxes, street signs and lamp posts assume human features and emerge as mutants and superheroes that variously fly, fall and otherwise battle with each other and unseen forces" (Brian Curtin, Here, There, Now: Contemporary Art from India, Gallery Soulflower exhibition catalogue, Bangkok, 2007, p. 25). The present lot, part of a suite of works detailing what Joag has imaginatively titled the Street Vendors Mimetic Scheme (SVMS), examines the tensions between authorities and daily life in the conurbation that is Mumbai. Here, a city street, complete with epidermis and sweat glands, heaves and breathes as human skin might, as its resident mailbox, street sign and lamppost assume their superhero forms to defend its vendors against the terrors of the Municipal Corporation and its bulldozers.

Through his work, Joag combines the worlds of artist and activist, in an effort to create and sustain various strands of dialogue between the two. "Within a context of urgent questions about urbanization and globalizations and the personal and the national losses entailed, Joag simultaneously figures change and resistance. Not offering the route of mere judgment – and all that might imply in terms of a conservative politics – Joag reveals the internal disruptions and radical alterations to perception that rapid development can engender. The language of the comic books suggests the ridiculous proportions of change contemporary urban experience is facing. More astutely, however, this language also suggests that while we may feel like children against the juggernaut of change, the power of imagination could ultimately hold sway" (Ibid.).

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