OED Gallery space at Mattancherry, Kochi hosts a fascinating art installation!
The OED gallery space in Mattancherry has an interesting piece of art on display, an installation that will challenge your senses and get you thinking! You got to experience it to believe it!
The thought behind the Hashtag# collective
‘Reflecting (on) the inhabited crossroads’ mirrors the context of Kochi as a centre of urbanisation in Kerala where past and present are colliding in ways that offer multiple perspectives, not fully understood by the people in the city, in the on-going construction of identity and the daily footprint.
The “growth” and “change” experienced through this walk through the mirrors is not clear, it is muddled and fractured and can be disorienting. Crucially, within the mirror forms, everything is reversed. Such subjective dislocations are positioned to raise queries in the minds of the viewers of our roles and involvements in the environment that we live in.
The Hashtag#Collective has chosen to reference-dismantle-reassemble iconic structures of Kerala as a response to some of these bewildering complexities and tensions. The upright mirrors that follow the floor plan of the Naalu Kettu Kerala house as well as its roof form, for instance, or the criss-cross ropes of the Cheenavela, or even the mirror tradition embodied by the Aranmulla Kannadis.
THE HASHTAG#COLLECTIVE
The Hashtag#Collective is an arts initiative founded by architect Biju Kuriakose, visual artist Parvathi Nayar and designer Abin Chaudhuri. The three came together, fuelled by a common desire to create a platform for exploring multi-disciplinary interventions, provisional propositions and site-specific installations at different sites with public footfall. The three founders, based out of Chennai and Kolkotta, have strong, personal creative prac-tices and between them have had permanent and temporaryart works installed at different venues ranging from Chennai’s Marina Beach to a repurposed girls school in Brittany, France to the T2 terminal in Mumbai Airport.Their vision for the Collective is a dynamic and fluid entity that will change and grow with multiple collaborations and partnerships. They hope it will be a creative space that will maximise the synergies of collaboration to create greater public engagement with art and the issues of our times, through thoughtful and thought-provoking interventions.
People
Parvathi Nayar’s multidisciplinary art practices re-look the internal/intimate spaces within our bodies, and the external/public spaces in which we live, often through the prism of science and technology. Her art investigates different engagements with our environments and the philosophies of inhabiting them. Her installations have included the seminal 20-foot high “drawn sculpture” A Story of Flight, T2 Terminal, Mumbai Airport; The Fluidity of Horizons, drawings and sound, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014/15; The Music Of the Spheres, 30-foot long mural, Chennai Mathematical Institute (2016).
Biju Kuriakose, an architect, urbanist and educator co-founded architectureRED, an architecture and urban design firm based out of Chennai, India. Having studied architecture in Mumbai, Biju received his Masters Degree in Architecture and Urban design from Pratt Institute, New York. Biju has designed projects that range from large scale urban design/ planning projects to design of urban as well as rural housing projects to institutional and commercial buildings thereby engaging in diverse issues of varying scale. Biju has lectured extensively on issues to do with architecture, urbanism and sustainability. He has been invited to several prestigious forums including Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance- New York, Pratt Institute and Columbia University, NY, as a speaker and studio critic. He currently teaches at School of Architecture and Planning, Anna University, Chennai as an External studio critic.
Abin Chaudhury,a graduate from Jadavupur University, Kolkota in 1996 and Industrial designer from Domus accademy, Milan founded Abin Design Studio in October, 2005. Over these 11 years, Abin has executed a range of diverse projects that have engaged many issues, multiple constituencies and varying scales, from interior design and architecture to urban design and Art . Being featured in the prestigious South Asian cross border list of ‘The 50 Most Influential names in Architecture and Design for 2014 and 2015’ .ADS has bagged many internationaland national awards and innumerable publications in magazines worldwide over a slim span of 10 years.
For more details, contact 9940491840.
