Baggage Claim

2010
Acrylic on canvas, bronze
96 x 204 in./ 244 x 518 cm.

In the triptych Baggage Claim, as in several other works, an everyday street scene takes on aspects of a history painting. Clutched within the mouths of gargoyles recreated from sculptural reliefs on the Victoria Terminus (now the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus), a bustling railway station in Mumbai, the painting is an expanded meditation on life and death in the metropolis. The city here is pictured as a skyline bordering black streaks and speech bubbles; and as a crumbling mass of cars, buildings and people that crowns the heads of commuters. Drips of paint descend like tar or plasma; insects and the insectile form of a crashed car reminiscent of works such as Haemoglyphics (Archipelago of Aches) (2009) and Traumanama (The Cry of the Gland) 2009–10 signal decay and mortality.