Slumdog Artists

View Slideshow

It reads like something out of a Bollywood screenplay. Slum kids chance upon detritus from famous artist’s installation. With the help of two young Americans, they decide to recreate the work in Dharavi. One messy Sunday, and many incensed parents later, the community rallies together and realises the transformative power of art.

If the story weren’t indeed real (barring the creative flourish of the last line there), you’d dismiss it as the ridiculous whimsies of a particularly talent-less Bollywood film writer. But that is, in fact, exactly how Anish Kapoor’s seminal “Shooting Into the Corner”, featuring a wax-spewing cannon, came to be recreated in Dharavi. The exercise, part of a larger three-month art project started by Americans, Alex White Mazzarella, 31 and Casey Nolan, 32, along with their friend, Dutch photographer Arne De Knegt, was perhaps down to serendipity or maybe just a very Mumbai moment. Mazzarella and Nolan, here to work on an immersive art installation within Dharavi, took the kids to Anish Kapoor’s show at Mehboob Studios in December. A day later, they made an unexpected discovery: the cardboard cannisters used to store the wax were being sent to Dharavi to be recycled. After approaching Kapoor and the organisers, the kids were given their blessings to recreate the work. Without the aid of the cannon however, the kids improvised a tad. “It turned into a free for all,” said Mazzarella. Soon, the kids were flinging blobs of greasy red-stained wax not only at the sheet of corrugated tin, but at each other. Parents, left to scrub out the stains from the children and their clothes, were not happy.

This Saturday, January 29, if you make your way to the 13th compound of Dharavi, you’ll be able to see the sheet in question, blob splotches and all. It is here, in this densely packed quarter, where about 10,000 people recycle 80 per cent of the city’s plastic waste, that Mazzarella, Nolan and De Knegt have put up what is likely the biggest and only in-situ art installation its residents have ever seen. Called “Artefacting Mumbai”, the project will be on display, only from 2pm to 8pm on Saturday, when in a rare instance (and an indication of the kind of support the project has garnered), the residents of the 13th compound will stop all business.

“In the beginning, art was extremely foreign to them, even cryptic,” said Mazzarella. “When we started painting our murals, people would come up to us, grab our arms and ask us what we were doing. We got a lot of stares.” Three months on, and the process has been transformational. Now, Mazzarella and Nolan are something of local celebrities. Everywhere they go, they are greeted as friends. “Alex! Ca-shey! How are you? Take pictures!” children demand, trailing them around the neighbourhood, tugging at their shirts.

“At first, we found it incredibly hard to get anything,” says Nolan, a videographer from Portland, Oregon. “But now, anything we need—a hammer, a ladder, tools, we can get it immediately.” Their efforts are littered throughout the area. Mini murals add unexpected bursts of colour in unexpected quarters. A chaiwallah was so thrilled with his signage that he refuses to let Mazarella pay for his tea. Everywhere, bland corrugated tin sheets have been brightened with swirly graphics, great multi-coloured whooses of colour that so tickled the residents that soon offers came pouring in. “Everyone asks us to paint their houses, their warehouses,” said Mazzarella. The project on Satuday will involve multiple parts, a cumulative effort between the residents and the artists: video screenings against walls, art installations fashioned out of cannisters, a beehive-ish construction, a wall of photos of Dharavi residents, as well as mini montages of Dharavi created by four artists from different corners of the globe.

The project, which will also materialise as a show in Portland later this year, was kickstarted a few years ago when as an urban planner in Hong Kong, Mazzarella stumbled upon information on Dharavi. Soon, he got Nolan and De Knegt on board, and the three decided to head down to Mumbai in November last year to see what they could do. When local Dharavi NGO Acorn sent out a call for an art project that would help the residents, the fit seemed natural. Together, the trio and Acorn, have been holding art classes for the area’s kids. The weekly sessions, which started off packed and eventually whittled down to the few and dedicated, involved anything from a primer on painting to a field trip to Anish Kapoor’s show.

Mazzarella, Nolan and De Knegt fly back to their homelands in February, and it is hoped that their efforts won’t go to waste. There’s talk of trying to sustain the momentum of what they’ve created, to rope in local artists to hold classes. The residents, having witnessed the almost inexplicable joy that art can bring, are hooked. They’ve asked Mazzarella and Nolan to finish several paint jobs before they return. “We have a lot of promises to keep,” said Mazzarella.

Artefacting Mumbai runs from 2pm to 8pm on Saturday, January 29. Guided tours will start from the west side of Mahim Junction Station every half hour. For more details, visit artefacting.com or contact Alex on 97696 93892.