art in transit Akshaya Elizabeth Zachariah page page page
PDP 401
Contents Explorationsfood in Peenya page 11 Exhibition in Peenya page 15 Entering PeenyaPublic Art intervention page 7 IntroductionAbout me, what I do page 5
Food Culture page 19 S.E.E. Peenya page 21 Moving forward with this project page 27
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Introduction
My name is Akshaya Elizabeth Zachariah, and I am a final year student at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. Over the past 3 and a half years of being in Srishti, I have got a chance to explore sketching, painting, muralling, illustration, animation, story-telling and visual narratives, photography, image making and typography. Srishti has definitely changed me as a person who once never used to speak up about my work , to a more confident, vibrant, enthusiastic and motivated person towards art and design as a practice. I have also learnt to become independent and social, interacting with many artists and designers that have visited our college, and otherwise My learnings at Srishti have not been of a specific field in Design, and that is what I enjoy the most. I have got to explore various design practices and tools and that have helped me immensely when it comes to the projects that I have chosen. What I am passionate about the most is interacting and engaging people with what I do. Most of the projects I have taken focussed on these two aspects. From clicking pictures of (lower-income families) children around their residential spaces to answering a million questions asked by the locals when I enter a space for public art intervention, it’s a nice feeling to explain to outsiders about our practice, breaking the notion and questions like, ‘why are you doing this?’ or ‘who’s paying for this?’ Through all my learnings, faults, research, interactions with faculty, feedback from peers, I have learnt to stand up for myself, because at the end of the day, it’s how I sell my idea and make it worth an ‘art project’ and stand out from the others.
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Entering Peenya
This semester I chose to explore ‘Art in Transit’ a project that required us to look at Peenya Industrial Area, and how public art intervention can take place in this given space. Peenya is not another MG Road, or Indiranagar because the community is close knit in certain spaces, being overshadowed by large scale industries and the Tumkur Highway cutting through the community, and huge areas of open abandoned land. The dusty atmosphere, and the shrill sound of blades cutting through granite or metal define Peenya as an Industrial hub. I was particularly interested in the community spaces in Peenya, tucked away in corners of this huge space. Walking through the uneven roads that meander through the small colourful houses, with women peeking through the small windows and children running around and playing, and inquisitive of us entering their space. Many locals came up to me and asked what I was up to. I used this as an opportunity to talk to them and share my experience with them. Despite a bit of language barrier that held me down from communicating with them, the people there aren’t close minded about anything and smile at us as we walk on.
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During one such walk that a couple of us did, around Peenya, the workers and a few residents spoke to some of us, about how unhappy they are with the Metro Line cutting right through their space, like a huge ‘modern’ structure in their community space. But they said that they can only live with it. Another two boys who I spoke to, when asked if they have used the metro before, chuckled and replied that unlike the bus, where they can ask the driver to stop at a particular point before their stop, they couldn’t do it in the metro! Looking at how each of us engaged with people through these walks got me thinking. One thing that caught my attention was people, their interactions with public space and clusters they formed in public space, noticing a certain ‘culture’ emerging, how people responded to site and how they used the space around them as well as how they interacted with one another.
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Explorations
{food in Peenya}
The first project I undertook was to focus on a type of culture that I noticed in Peenya. I spotted numerous kadais parked along the side of main roads and streets, that sold many food items, the popular ones being samosas, sponge cakes, biscuits, tea and coffee. For lunch, many tiffin centres around Peenya served rice, sambar, lime rice, tomato curry, chapatti, parathas, and even the famous Ambur Biriyani. All these small stalls, despite having a Mc Donalds and a CCD in Peenya as well, occasionally had people cluster around the stalls for food, the peak hours being during lunch time. I decided to map all these stalls and illustrate some of the food items that they sold. I also looked at the density of the crowd in different stalls. I was extremely excited to go around to different stalls and interact with the shopkeepers about their stalls and try some of their food items. I even got to speak to some locals and workers who worked in Peenya. It was amazing to see how the people there are really welcoming and eager to hear what we were doing. Very few shopkeepers closed their doors to us clicking pictures of their stalls. Overall it was a lovely experience walking around exploring Peenya, walking through the streets and gullies to the dusty main road, spotting even some abandoned carts here and there.
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Exhibit at Peenya
For my exhibit at the Peenya Metro Station, I decided to focus on people. Through the numerous pictures I had clicked during my studies at Peenya, and various sketches I had done while waiting at the bus stop, I felt the urge to play with the ‘people of Peenya’ through a mural. The space I had chosen to do this mural was the wall facing the parking space of the metro station, a perfect view for those driving by the NID road. My mural was a mixture of elements focussing on colours that I noticed in Peenya, the people I had sketched and clicked pictures of, and interacted with. What was lovely about the mural was that I chose to play around with the size of the people and juxtapose them. The process I used to do this mural was using an over-head projector to project the traced sketches done on acetate paper. I simply traced the projected images on the wall. This method was most familiar to me, since I’ve done mural projects earlier. The reaction of everyone around watching this process was simply beautiful. Everyone wanted to trace, some even amazed at how easy this method was, bringing out the excitement of the child in them!
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This mural gave me an idea as to what to include in my mural and how much is too much. I enjoyed learning as I executed the mural getting constant feedback from my faculty regarding colour and composition. During the exhibit, many people enjoyed the concept of highlighting the people of Peenya, something which is always overshadowed by the industrial aspect of Peenya. Some faculty and people who visited Peenya during the exhibition asked me to think of making this a narrative piece, which made me think of using text in my mural to even highlight silhouettes of the people, a possible way of image making. Sadly I couldn’t complete the entire mural due to some issues with the wall being government property, something from which I have learnt a big lesson and moved on.
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Food Culture
With a lot of struggles as to how I wanted to take off from my mural ‘test’ at Peenya for the exhibition, I decided to look back at my previous work and explorations and choose a different path for my final project. Taking the project of the food culture in Peenya, I thought, ‘Why not use this as a forum to show people and give the opportunity for those entering Peenya to try out some of the delicious samosas or the chai at Peenya.’ So I decided, for my first prototype, to make an illustrated map of Peenya, the radius being Peenya Industry metro station on one end to Yeshwantpur Industry metro on the other end. In the middle of the map, was Peenya Metro Station. Through all the findings, the pictures, the notes I had from my walks in Peenya, I tracked down the number of stalls and local carts that I visited and came across. I chose certain food items like musambi Juice, fruit salad, chai, masala dosa etc and made small illustrations of them on small cards that could also be located on the map. I even gave a small write-up of the item, or the cart, or the shop-owner to highlight the people behind the lovely food!
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S.E.E Peenya
Being the first prototype, I received some really useful feedback as to how I would want to go about this as a project in the metro station. Looking at the map I illustrated, I could play with the form of the map and even the location of the map. I wanted this map to be a very interactive map, making sure people would be inquisitive to what it was and lead them to the mural (located at the exit of the Metro Station.) So when people exit the metro, and walk down through the first floor towards the exit, I could give them glimpses of my illustrated map, zoomed in versions of the street here and there, advertisements of the food illustrations, the carts that one can find, on posters, and when they reach the exit, a huge blow up of the map for them to have a look at. I also made small cards of the different items, and behind the card, people can rate the food they’ve had, for themselves based on hygiene, taste, value for money, and leave it for other people to try out for themselves.
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I decided to brand this project as ‘S.E.E. Peenya’, S.E.E. being the acronym for sit, eat ,enjoy Peenya. Most of the stalls i visited offered some sort of seating arrangement, and also, I noticed how Peenya Metro Station is usually where people pass through to go to another place. People are just passing by, not really getting a chance to expreience Peenya as a space and but overlooking it. Looking at this through a long term lens, I know that Peenya will see a whole lot of people entering this space, in the near future, due to the various developments happening in there. And this would also encourage food lovers to come, try the local food and explore Peenya. Many times these local businesses get side-lined because of the availability of ‘modern and tastier’ food one can get at Mc Donalds. But I want to break that notion completely, the western culture of burgers and chicken, by upholding our tasty snacks and famous chai and coffee in those lovely conical glasses. This way I could grab the attention of entering Peenya for the first time, for them not all about the Industries and the heavy amazing food culture and the people behind
many people who are to know that Peenya is machinery, but holds an the tasty meals they offer.
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Moving forward
I am really looking forward to exploring each and every metro station along the ‘Green Line’, after noticing how everyone in Bangalore talks about how cool Indiranagar or M.G road is because of its popularity and the many facilities and restaurants they have. Why not give that same highlight about the places that the ‘Green Line’ Metro Rail passes through, since this line is just coming up, I see this project going to many of the metro stops and putting the ‘unity’ in ‘community’ for each of the spaces and the people residing there. It would also allow for many people to visit these spaces in Bangalore too, in the coming years and since I enjoy food , travel and culture, I want to more people to experience this too!
Thank you! page 27