What Hema Upadhyay’s art meant, and why it was significant

In Hema’s works, the aspirational migrant is often the protagonist — climbing buildings, desiring a home and staring into shrinking expanses writes Abhay Sardesai

Hema Upadhyay’s works explored urban spaces — geographies and formations — often using “abject” objects. While tarp swatches, plastic scrap and metal foil, among other things, helped install a rolling slumscape that indexed life in the “disreputable” city, ingeniously assembled matchsticks made a chandelier come alive with all the obvious ironies.

A Dharavi-themed installation where Hema Upadhyay created an aerial view of the Mumbai slum on a gallery floor using tin cans, plastic and aluminum sheets. (HT File Photo)

Her work spoke of a wide range of issues — uneven development, transforming societies and crises of adaptation.

Dream A Wish, Wish A Dream (2004, 06), probably one of her finest works, asks a series of uncomfortable questions. How do people flying in a plane look at people living on the ground? What are the conversations you imagine between huts and skyscrapers, mosques and temples, playgrounds and nullahs? How do definitions of Utopia and Dystopia leak into each other? And finally, how do we accommodate worlds that often want to interrupt and cancel each other out?

An art installation by Hema Upadhyay set up at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in February 2015 as part of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. (HT file photo)

In Hema’s works, the aspirational migrant is often the protagonist — climbing buildings, desiring a home and staring into shrinking expanses.

I first met Hema in 2000, when I curated the show Memos for the New Millennium, From Artists of A Moulting World, for Birla Academy of Art, Mumbai. She had come from Baroda and her work then featured staggered depictions of a woman carrying out a series of mundane tasks — walking, conversing, reading, lolling. These were often self-images that declared the intention of claiming public and private spaces.

It will take all of us in the art world a long time to make sense of her loss and recover from the tragedy.

Abhay Sardesai is the Editor of ART India. Views expressed are personal.