Visual artist Surekha had earlier held an exhibition of video-Installation titled, "Communing with Urban Heroines". Now, she is showing her new videos highlighting the "unusual preoccupations" of people who assign a specific personality to the city. These people project a sense of belongingness to the city. They propose a sense of self-dependence, an alternative mode of life preoccupation; and a sense of restrain against the loss of individuation due to global uniformity.
 
These videos (Group 1) by Surekha are the result of her interaction with these people. And these works contain a different take on the city's personality through such and other alternative "others" and "different" people's vocation, exposing the stark reality of the city: A retired old man who laughs at the break of dawn; a woman who eats and sleeps in a public park (for thirty years now); a talkative Hindi speaking man and his articulate, English speaking ex-mason associate delving on E-resource and creating jobs for "economically weak Muslim women" and men who undertake to bury unclaimed dead bodies in the city.  What makes them icons? Is it their refusal to get swallowed into the homogenous urban tide? Each carve out a space, transform and laugh with their surrounding population to health, to clean it up with their zest and entrepreneurship or even sit outside it in rebellion like the woman in the park. Interviewed, they talk in monologues about their lives or interests.

The other five videos (Group 2) form together into a group, in the sense there is an ant moving within an altering boundary, the colour and shape of a wall that belongs to nobody takes addressing the notion of hygiene, the sense of routine brought into a demand for the desire of political alternatives and the obvious optimism that metaphoric towers cannot be fallen, are all, somehow, connected to the alternative behaviour pattern of such 'others' and 'different' people.

For more information please email: celine@10chancerylanegallery.com or call 2810-0065. The exhibition runs from February 4 until February 20, 2010.



Group 1 videos
"Un-Claimed", 10 min, single-channel video, 2009-10
"Romeos & Juliets", 8 min 30 sec, single-channel video, 2009-10
"An Empty Bench", 8 min 30 sec, single-channel video, 2009-10
"r e   s o u r c e", 10 min, single-channel video, 2009-10
"Tree woman", 10 min, single channel video, 2005

Group 2 videos
"Nobody's Walls", 4 min, 2008  [no sound]
"And an Other Day", 4 min, 2008
"Not All Towers Fall", 4 min 30 sec, 2008
"An Installation", 4 min 30 sec, 2008/9
"Line of Control", 3 min, 2003