JEHANGIR NICHOLSON ART FOUNDATION
The Forest in the city is a space that is constantly being reconfigured by practices. It is ‘made’ by different and often competing regimes of representation. These take the form of objects that range from maps, works of art, policy documents, religious totems, cultural objects and more. Each makes claims of the forest - what it was, is, or can become. At the museum, the exhibition and related events hope to strike a dialogue between these objects, and those in the museum. With this, we hope to explore the relationship between objects and culture, narrative and meaning, along with the categories of ‘folk’, ‘tribal’ and ‘contemporary’ art.
The exhibition has two main sections. The first is called ‘Mapping the Forest’ which explores acts of representation as Maps. Every map represents and constructs a different notion of the forest, as a bounded defined space separated from the city, as the space of everyday life as lived by the inhabitants of the forest, and as a space within a virtual reality- an artificial immersive three-dimensional terrain.
The second section is called ‘A Forest of Claims’. Here objects through which the forest is imagined and claimed by a variety of stakeholders are placed in a conversation with one another. These include works of art, music, letters, religious totems, political banners, among many others.
Along with the show, Dinesh Barap, the Warli artist will be creating a work in the space of the museum. At the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, the exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events that can provoke a conversation around questions of identity, rights and culture in the forest.
‘A Forest in the City: Living within Sanjay Gandhi National Park / Aarey Colony in Mumbai’ is the outcome of a three year research project at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai in collaboration with Pani Haq Samiti. The project explores the work of representation in the negotiation of access to infrastructure by poor and marginalised communities within SGNP and Aarey Colony. It is a collaboration between different institutions, activists, community groups and individuals including architects, urbanists, anthropologists, activists, community members, cultural practitioners and archivists.
Presented by JNAF and CSMVS in collaboration with KRVIA and Pani Haq Samiti
Project Team: Rohan Shivkumar. Lisa Bjorkman. Sitaram Shelar. Rohit Kudale. Yogesh Bole. Manisha Dhinde. Savitri Medhatul. George Jacob. Ankush Chandran. Sonal Sundararajan. Simpreet Singh. Shirish Joshi. Rashmi Varma. Shilpi Syal. Astha Sahay. Siddhesh Godambe. Sunil Jaiswar. Pravin Borkar. Ganesh Pandit. Alisha Masurkar. MC Mawali. Dinesh Barap. Ronil Jain. Sharvari Shastry.
Supported by the UKRI, ‘Negotiating the Grid-Poverty, gender, and access to services in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka’.
