‘Mountain Man’
Site Specific Installation, Digital T.V monitor,
Coloured halogen lights, Peep hole on wooden door,
Cast iron bath tub, mud and grass. 2015 –
A site-specific installation made in an old art deco hotel in Pune which now serves as an artist residency space. This installation is about a fictional imagining of a character who transforms into a mountain while he lay in his bathtub. Narrating a spooky story about dreams and death in terms of the geometry of a room “spied on” by the viewer through a peephole and reflecting on whether houses have inner lives as rich and mysterious as humans and if buildings store secrets. Examining the auras belonging to spaces exhibitionary and intimate – the film set, the gallery and the house – to evoke the feeling of ‘having occupied’.
The installation is sited in post facto and has three parts-
One being a sculptural installation of a mountain constructed with mud and grass in a bathroom seen through a peephole on the door. The viewer is not allowed to enter the bathroom and can only access the installation through the peephole, the second is text as subtitles on a monitor narrating the incident, the third is changing halogen lights on a textured wall, which transforms as an imaginary map. The viewer moves in the space to experience the work.
