As 2019 ended, Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) lit the last flickers of festivity in the happening city of Goa, bringing together practitioners, experts and enthusiasts from a myriad of disciplines ranging from visual, performing, live, Culinary Art to literature, film, fashion and crafts. The fourth edition of SAF, Dec 15-22, was an amalgamation of curated exhibitions and programmes, workshops, initiatives for the students and many more.
‘Imagined Documents‘, curated by multidisciplinary artist and curator Ravi Agarwal, was one of the projects dedicated to photography in SAF, 2019. The exhibition features the works by seven prominent photography artists of the country. Revolving around the idea of staged photography and construction of the reality, the show transcends the possibilities of photography as a medium to create stories.
Dia Mehhta Bhupal‘s ‘Bathroom’, as part of ‘Imagined Documents’, represents a public restroom that has been recreated using thousands of paper tubes. Pages from magazines are torn apart and rolled to build a life-size set of an everyday space that we often visit without paying much attention to its distinctiveness. And this extremely elaborate process of recreating a space is then documented and clicked by the artist to share a glimpse of the final product with the audience. Throughout the meditative practice, the artist plays multiple roles of an architect, designer, craftsperson and photographer.
A graduate in Photography from Parsons School Of Design, New York(2006), Dia, a Hyderabad-based artist, has extensively exhibited her works in India and abroad. Her significant participation includes Lyon Biennale, France, Visions FromIndia, Pizzuti Collection, Colombus(2017), Kochi Muziris Biennale, India, Yinchuan Biennale, China, ‘Mind the Gap’, Gallery SKE, India(2016), and #GuangzhouInternationalArtFair, China(2010) to name a few.
Explore other categories of artworks that we have curated on our platform:
Image credit:
Artwork: Gallery SKE
Artist: Dia Mehhta Bhupal via Facebook
