Re-Claim / Re-Cite / Re-Cycle - Artworks by Atul Bhalla, Chitra Ganesh & others April 27, 2009

Re-Claim / Re-Cite / Re-Cycle - Artworks by Atul Bhalla, Chitra Ganesh, Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Tv Santhosh, Tushar Joag, Justin Ponmany, Rajan M Krishnan, Prajakta Potnis, Manjunath Kamath, Rajesh Ram, Prajjwal Choudhury, Vivek Vilasini, Prajakta Palav, Ravi Agarwal, Mansi Bhatt, Sharmila Samant, Sajjad Ahmed & Bhagyanath. An exhibition curated by: Bhavna Kakar. To liberate the practice metaphor called Recycling from the narrow confines of waste management, one needs to understand that re cycling is essentially an act of re-ordering and re-forming. Recycling also stands an antonym for disposing, a concept metaphor which has deep roots in the praxis of affluence and excess. Faced with this maze of contextual presumptions one begins to wonder, what are the other (various) category metaphors within which recycling operates. We recycle Mughal gardens, cell phones, souvenirs, landscapes, faith, ideas, thoughts, images, music, writing.almost everything. Feeling divorced from our past, we re-order memory to produce history, fashion (ideas about our external appearances), goes through a series of trends wherein trends (allegedly) move in cycles. As we go in deeper into examples and observations, the initial presumption continues to get reiterated and we realize that indeed the desire and the practice of recycling are indeed rooted to certain experiences of scarcity. Of course in the recent past recycling has been re constructed and re positioned both as a way of life and as an industry. As we begin to enter an era characterized by the fear of loosing the planet itself, there is a realization that much of this impending disaster has been brought on by the industrial and postindustrial celebration of excess. Driven by post-capitalist systems of communication, we are in the midst of an extensive generation of consciousness positioning recycling as the dominant philosophy of new age materialism. This (over) understanding of recycling in terms of materiality increasingly lets us forget the deeper cultural roots of this concept metaphor, and our engagement with it. This fractured and diverse relationship with our urge to save and re use is getting increasing appropriate by the neo liberal premises. It is maybe the right time to analyze and document artistic imaginations and representations of this concept metaphor called recycling.

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