Urban modern art as a metaphor for man-made crises

Artists Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra’s creations often bear pop visual characters, placed in an abstract manner, to create the impression of urban modern art. The

Artists Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra’s creations often bear pop visual characters, placed in an abstract manner, to create the impression of urban modern art. The artists say some of their paintings are derivatives of lucid dreams. Their acrylic paintings can often be mistaken for digital prints to the amateur eyes due to their fine brushwork.

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Thukral, a graduate from Delhi College of Arts, and Tagra, a post-graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, met at a social gathering in 1997 in Chandigarh and started working together in 1999. Since then, they have collaborated and displayed their creations in over 40 exhibitions.

“Our work cannot be seen as a reflection of one person’s thought. It is an engine that has several parts to it,” said Tagra, a resident of Sector 22.

The duo’s latest project, Farmer Is A Wrestler, 2019, is based on the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country. After close to nine months of research and consultations on the subject with economists and researchers, they broke down the crisis into 12 categories. They then represented it as a Venn diagram. Sections of the diagram were broken down and drawn on with wrestlers wrestling to metaphorically emphasise the struggles of the farmer.

“Soil is a common component of both farming and wrestling. We created a wrestling pit with the Venn diagram for people to interact with and understand the issues facing our farmers,” said Thukral, whose father owns an akhara in his home town, Jalandhar.

The project is currently on display in London, but different versions of it have already been displayed in Chandigarh and Delhi.

Interactive art installations have been persistent about in the 20-year-old career of Thukral and Tagra, who are also neighbours. Interactive art gets the message across because it engages the viewer. Otherwise, they just get bored gazing at the images, said Tagra.

Their pursuit of human interactions in their creations let them to develop a game theory whereby each creation has an interactive game. For the Farmer Is A Wrestler installation, the duo came up with a tongue-twister based card game. The subjects of the twisters vary from landless farmers to green revolution to subsidies. On the flip side of the cards are facts based on the issues.

Walk of Life, 2015, is a series of interactive games that can be seen as the evolution of man from fish, reptile, mammal, human and deity, i.e. the ten avatars of Vishnu. Walk of Life 2 is played in Kaliyug, where water has become a scare commodity.

“You are given a glass of water at the beginning and as you progress you will be given tasks and obstacles that you have to overcome while saving water. The idea was to make people aware of our limited resources and how acts like throwing a charity dinner for climate change can never play a role in saving the climate. It often leads to food wastage,” said Tagra.

The artists have so far displayed their works in London, France, Kazakhstan, Germany, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco and others.