Your DREAM HOUSE -Bengaluru: an installation by Baptist Coelho

@ 1 Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery, Bangalore

13 - 14 August 2010

Opening Thursday 12th August, 6.30pm

...

Your Dream House - Bengaluru

The city of Bangalore is strategically located in the heart of Southern India, and has emerged as a cosmopolitan city with many epitaphs .Dubbed as the future city by Jawaharlal Nehru it has a reputation of being the hub for science and technology of the country.

Migrants have been part of the city’s fabric. The city became the destination for many who were lured by the public sectors, Information technology and Bio technology. There has been a pressure on development and housing and this is visible in the erratic traffic, bottlenecks that have congested the city.

The problem of housing and infrastructure are fundamental to Bangalore. The most common sight in the city is demolition and construction. Housing has been a significant issue, the past exists in the romantic colonial Bungalows of the British, the city soon expanded with middle class BDA housing sites, flats emerged to dot the skyline, villas and gated communities insulated the rich and the city spread out in all directions with new expansion plans and the inherent problems of civic amenities.

In 1537, Kempe Gowda built four watch towers in Bengaluru, locating them at the cardinal directions - North, South, East and West. These were built on rock outcrops and marked the predicted limits to where the city would grow. Over the centuries, the city has developed into one of the most populated cities in India and has also been nicknamed “the Silicon Valley of India” because of the information technology industry established there. This growth has presented the city with unique challenges; one of them being, infrastructure. The .Real estate boom changed the landscape with investors and developers pitching in to house the teeming masses. They are many who left unable to cope with the city’s pressure but the weather seems to be the greatest incentive to stay.

Between the nexus of administrators, Politician, builders and real-estate developers, housing has been a mirage for many .The Dream house project explores the aspirations of the citizens and the young, it looks at the rapid real-estate development and the apathy of the government that is unable to house the poor and marginalized.

Your Dream Home (Bengaluru), is an installation which draws reference to rock outcrops and the Kempe Gowda Watch Towers. The stack of bricks which are seen near construction sites create their own man-made outcrop and become a contrast to those natural rock formations which form the base of the watch towers.

The installation consists of locally-sourced, red bricks which have been assembled to represent one tenth of the actual 60 X 40 feet, which BDA sells as property. Immerging from the top of the stack is a window which was once part of a Bangalore household. From the base, emerge handwritten notes which have been written by the locals of Bengaluru and are arranged on the floor to form the foundation and shadow of this brick tower. These handwritten notes describe the aspirations of the ideal home of these people and contrast sharply with the weight of urban development and the reality of the limitations on their lives.

...

Baptist Coelho is a mumbai based artist. Your Dream Home (Bengaluru) was realised during Baptist Coelho’s Artist-in-Residence program at 1Shanthiroad in Bengaluru, India, 2010.

...