Circa

2011
120-part sculpture
Pigmented cast resin, steel, rope

Installation view, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad City Museum, Mumbai

Circa is a painstakingly handcrafted sculpture that can easily be mistaken for bamboo scaffolds commonly found at construction sites in India. The resemblance vests it with the ability to transform any room it inhabits into a charged and disrupted space—a work in progress or an abandoned project. What appear to be bamboo poles are in fact one hundred and twenty sculptural elements cast in pigmented resin and steel and bound together with coir. The surfaces of these poles are inscribed with images of animals engaged in primal activities such as eating (often violently devouring each other) and procreating. These animal reliefs which evoke the laws of the wild and the endless cycle of life are derived from gothic sculptures that adorn the entrance of the Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus) in Mumbai where they loom over nearly two million passengers who pour in and out of the railway station every day. These beasts form a subtext of sustenance and violence, life and death, making Circa simultaneously a sculpture and a scripture; an edifice and an edict.