The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) is holding the largest contemporary exhibition ‘Megacities Asia’ with large-scale sculptures and installations that examine issues of urbanization. Eleven artists offer 19 works created from accumulations of objects found in their home “megacities”—those with populations of 10 million or more—in China, India and South Korea, which have seen unprecedented development over the past 50 years. The exhibition is on view from April 3–July 17.The Megacities Asia extends beyond the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Gallery into other exhibition and public spaces, on to the Museum’s front lawn and into the city beyond, with a sculpture presented in Marketplace Center near Faneuil Hall. Asia is the world’s most rapidly urbanizing continent, containing more than half of the approximately 30 megacities around the globe. Beijing, Shanghai, Delhi, Mumbai and Seoul have grown at an astounding pace over the last half-century to equal and in some cases exceed the size and urban density of metropolises like Tokyo and New York.Four Indian artists including Hema Upadhyay (1972–2015, Mumbai), Subodh Gupta (born 1964, Delhi), Aaditi Joshi (born 1980, Mumbai) and Asim Waqif (born 1978, Delhi) are participating in the MFA’s ‘Megacities Asia’ exhibition.Hema UpadhyayThere are two works by Hema Upadhyay reflect on the migrant experience, as understood by the artist firsthand—she relocated from a smaller city to Mumbai to begin her career. The installation Build me a nest so I can rest (2015) arranges 300 terra-cotta birds—some handmade by craftsmen from river clay and sold as trinkets, others by the artist herself—on a 35-foot shelf hung at eye level. Hema and her assistants painted the figurines to resemble migratory species and inserted thin slips of paper with typed quotations about migrants’ hopes and experiences into the beaks.In another work, Hema portrays a small room created with aluminum sheets, car scrap, enamel paint, plastic sheets, found objects, M-seal, resin and Hardware material. The inner area, made out of scraps, aluminum sheets and found car elements and objects, giving the space a sense of disorganised crowd and poverty, contrasts with the combination of bright colours and crafted skyscrapers and dwellings that convey a diverse happy imagery of the slum. The dimensions of the immersive installation 8’ x 12’ (2009). The work evokes the entire Mumbai city in a single, expansive view, while at the same time providing the experience of how constricting it can be.Subodh GuptaSubodh Gupta evokes densely packed neighborhoods in Delhi by accumulating and arranging objects commonly found in the kitchens of local households: stainless-steel kitchen racks, dishes and utensils. Cooking and eating practices in Indian homes, as everywhere, are important in forming individual, family and community identities. However, globalized culture has begun to change local meanings attached to food in cities like Delhi, where high-end sushi restaurants appear alongside those serving traditional Indian cuisine. Gupta’s installation Take off your shoes and wash your hands (2008) is made up of rows of kitchen racks found in urban Indian homes of all classes. Each of the 48 racks references a family unit. Gathered en masse, they suggest a whole community, perhaps gathering for a communal meal, but the individuality of each is lost along the way.Aaditi JoshiAaditi displayed her first solo show at Gallery Maskara in Mumbai. An unavoidable by-product of rapid development in megacities is an enormous quantity of waste—in Mumbai, enormous hills of discarded plastic form surreal landscapes. Influenced by the debris she saw around her in the city, she incorporated them into her artistic practice. She used heat to manipulate and fuse together plastic bags to create bold, lacelike works, such as Untitled (2016).Asim WaqifA large interactive installation by Asim Waqif, an architect-turned-artist also from Delhi, responds to the megacity’s ongoing construction on a massive scale. The artist elevates the status of undervalued local materials, such as bamboo, which is rapidly falling out of favor in India as developers turn to high-tech building methods. Venu (2012) is an accumulation of bamboo poles held together with rope, which Waqif learned to hand knot in part by working with Bengali migrant laborers. Visitors’ proximity and touch, as well as changes in light, trigger electrical relays and motors that vibrate or make sounds. The more people explore the work, the more it responds. Bringing together traditional practices with contemporary technology, Waqif shares a vision for a sustainable future where they’re seen as complementary mechanisms rather than working against each other.The exhibition will also feature artists like Ai Weiwei (born 1957, Beijing), Choi Jeong Hwa (born 1961, Seoul), Han Seok Hyun (born 1975, Seoul), Hu Xiangcheng (born 1959, Shanghai), Song Dong (born 1966, Beijing), Yin Xiuzhen (born 1963, Beijing) and the collective flyingCity, led by Jeon Yongseok (born 1968, Seoul). Several of them are being exhibited in an American institution for the first time, and nearly half of the works were created specifically for Megacities Asia.Follow@ARTINFOIndia
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