Death Of Distance

2007
Black lead, stained resin, steel, lenticular prints
Sculpture:  64 in./ 161 cm. diameter
Prints:  18 x 23 in./ 46 x 60 cm. (each)

Death of Distance is one among a large suite of works by Jitish Kallat that deploy text as image. While the one rupee coin is enlarged to the height of an average Indian and covered in black lead, the lenticular prints flip between two overlaid ‘found texts’. One is a horrifying news story the artist encountered about a twelve-year-old girl from West Bengal who killed herself because her mother couldn’t afford to give her one rupee to buy a snack. The other is an article announcing the launch of a “One India Plan” by a government-run telecom company which would bring down the cost of inter-state calls to one rupee. An official quoted in the latter story referred to the new scheme as “the death of distance”, alluding to the seemingly universal affordability of the one rupee tariff. The triumphant text of the telecom story is haunted by the story of the little girl and the one rupee coin which simultaneously costs nothing and everything.