Alongside the Kannagi Art District, St+art Chennai 2020 also saw the organisation of India Pop - an exhibition curated as an interactive journey through different facets of Indian popular culture at Chennai’s Palladium Mall. On March 1st, the exhibition’s three expansive installations were inaugurated amidst a celebration of street culture, complete with a graffiti jam, b-boying, a participative stencilling workshop and an interactive panel discussion, remaining on display for the next 15 days.
The installations, including the neon work ‘Saurashtra’, the immersive audio-video piece ‘India Unfiltered’ and the photobooth-lookalike project ‘The Travelling Photo Studio’, sought to provide a unique opportunity for visitors to explore diverse fragments of India.
Saurashtra
A great number of Indian scripts today are endangered and on the verge of extinction, and ‘Sourashtra’ - an Indo-Aryan script spoken majorly in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, is one of them. ‘Saurashtra’ - the neon installation, was created by typographers and artists Hanif Kureshi (Gujarat) and Shiva Nallaperumal (Tamil Nadu), as an attempt to investigate their linguistic roots, as well as understand the roots of our expansive country by tracking lost fonts and scripts.
The Travelling Photo Studio
Set in the modern world, the Travelling Photo Studio was an attempt to acquaint today’s youth with a widespread cultural phenomenon from India’s past - that of making images in a studio setting. Repurposing images from ‘Indian popular culture’ by eminent art historian Prof. Jyotindra Jain, the piece presented them in a traditional photo studio format, hand-painted by artists Kafeel and Trivendra.
India Unfiltered
With unprecedented and ever-increasing access to mobile phones and the internet, India’s young generation is growing up in the midst of a digital revolution, with cyberspace hosting the unfiltered thoughts of millions breaking the barriers of class, caste and gender. The audio-video immersive installation ‘India Unfiltered’ sought to showcase the influence of this digital accessibility and understand its impact on public consciousness, visual aesthetics, and identity structures.
Located in a location diametrically opposite to Kannagi Nagar, India Pop sought to not only activate the site with unique urban art interventions but also connect two geographically and culturally distant parts of Chennai - reintroducing the area of Kannagi Nagar to the city’s residents.
