The Desired Scaffold: Visualizing Architectures of Longings and Isolations
What kind of acts are required to create structures we desire to live in? Structures we work within, spaces we cook food in response to our hunger, architectures that become spaces for finding solace as moments of public, private, personal – sometimes secluded from one another, intermingle as desires within and outside unfurl.
The window period that diagnoses freedom from its construction is determined by the time spent or created by inhabitants of any space; space which implies both room and duration. But, what happens when windows in any space are left ajar? Freedom escapes its current meanings as one comes across new, untouched, even strange lands outside – and in that, a seeking begins. A seeking towards a place where one longs to be, a seeking away from architectures where one feels isolated when promises of comfort remain unfulfilled.
As interiors that define offices, homes and spaces of commune are drilled with this quest to be somewhere else, the arris that marks the intersection of two surfaces, the skirting that runs through the base of all walls – gyrate. The functional yet hierarchically nether spaces of toilet rooms and kitchen spaces explode, as beds and dinings which carry memories expand the politics of varied identities and lay bare in front of us – different forms of submissions. In stages, as the outsides of any visible architecture wears off, structures of pipes and veins, doors and openings, walls and bones open up, and crack – bit by bit – unflattening structures which maintain the sanity of conventions, built to prolong existing powers in place.
In staring at the aforementioned happenings – of disassemblage, of newer constructions – what appears are skeletal scaffolds … those elevated structures designed to create support, built by and for the workers. These scaffolds branching out of indentures of servitude, stare at the onlooker with a deep unrest and provoke alternate imaginations for the foundation of any architecture. Lodging into desired built environments for the future, the window period (that once diagnosed freedom from its construction) stretches further into a newer state of affairs and unfolds The Desired Scaffold – now erected grounded in this room as it asks one question: What acts create structures we desire to inhabit and topple?
Desire: From Latin dēsīderō which means “to long for, desire, feel the want of, miss, regret”; from de- + sidus (in the phrase de sidere, "from the stars") in connection with astrological hopes
Scaffold: From Old French (e)schaffaut, from the base of catafalque, which means “a temporary platform from which to repair or erect a building”
The Desired Scaffold is a proposition for unearthing hidden, barely understood or rarely spoken about desires that we negotiate with as we inhabit different architectures in our everyday lives. Presenting artworks by Akash Joshi, Anikesa Dhing, Ashima Raizada, Bhuwal Prasad, Harisha Chennangod, Harnoor Juneja, Kapil Jangid, Sabiha Dohadwala and Vikrant Kano, the exhibition visualizes acts of building, maintenance, repair -- of shelters, offices, homes -- and explores the relationship between built environments and intervening bodies filled with many desires. The display, supported by an exhibition design of concrete structures, holds sand and carries reflections on meanings we associate with public as well as private spaces.
As Sabiha Dohadwala, Harisha Chennangod and Bhuwal Prasad, examine macroscopic landscapes through the usage of materials such as hand woven jacquard, corrugated sheets and acrylic, protected walls, distant windows, perennial avenues, arches and many urban landscapes – seen from a panopticon or a bird eyes view – pathway into encounters with personal histories. With Kapil Jangid who uses concrete, metal and black glass, and Vikrant Kano who presents a lightbox, histories of conflicted lands as well as wastelands come to the forefront and highlight the politics of migration and demolition. The exhibition design – directing the passerby to traverse through expansive and compact closures – is interspersed with photographs of Harnoor Juneja who dissects nooks and corners of the street with bodies partially present. As these artworks segway and seethe to a point of threshold in the display, mixed media works of Anikesa Dhing and Ashima Raizada, as well as photographs of Akash Joshi point at gendered occupations which unfurl through multiple interiors, protesting bodies, and the lack of it to spaces of intimacy which enable footsteps to find what they seek in secrecy.
In memory of these images, objects, materials, and aesthetics, the exhibition highlights architecture and its influence on culture as the artworks point at plural desires leaping up on existing scaffolds of power – invoking newer imaginations for spaces that can enable safety, liberation, and listening.
In this enclosure of Gallery XXL, a space-time for extra large desires. In this desire, a slit that leads to: your desired scaffold.
