Game of throes

A TABLE TENNIS board built with old currency notes. Another ping pong table with potholes. A new set of gym tools for the multitaskers. The second version of artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra's Games People Play exhibition is a swift swing from the perception of culture to performance of present-day anxieties.

- FAIZAL KHAN

In 2015, Thukral and Tagra set up Games People Play, their new exhibition, at the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai as a lens to observe how people negotiate cultural matters. A decade later, the duo, who use games as a centrepiece of their art practice, invite viewers to participate in such matters as politics, migration, displacement and climate change.

Mounted at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Games People Play 02 has ten works that viewers could engage with to disgorge their anxieties stemming from the social, political and economic crises within contemporary society.

Each game, played over ten days-the duration of the exhibition (October 7-16)-works on the viewers' emotions and beliefs by linking up the state of society with the plight of the participants.

Crisis and catharsis

"It's a catharsis," says Thukral about the show, which marks the 20th anniversary of their collaborative studio work. "We want the people to play the games and express their emotions," he adds. Assets and Liabilities, the first work on the first level of the exhibition gallery, shows a paper plane-shaped table tennis board whose surface is built with old currency notes.