REMAINS OF THE DAY

How can painting, long trapped in hierarchies of objecthood and commodity, hold ruins, dust, absence, and yet insist on the living?

- PRACHI SATRAWAL

Paribartana Mohanty's latest exhibition, 'I Rescued Speed Altogether', on view at Shrine Empire, brings together 12 large paintings and three moving-image pieces that explore demolition, displacement and the rapid transformation of Delhi's urban landscape. Central to the exhibition is the demolition of Kathputli Colony, once a settlement of puppeteers, magicians, dancers and musicians, razed in 2017 under Delhi's first in-situ rehabilitation project. Earlier this year, the multistorey high-rise built for the rehabilitation of Kathputli's residents was renamed Pragati Apartments-from Phoenix a hollow title without any record of the just and equitable habitat promised nearly a decade ago.

Kathputli Colony, as cultural theorist Santosh Sadanandan reminds us in the essay accompanying the exhibition, "was not just an eviction, but a symbolic burial of nomadic time, a time that could not be surveyed, taxed, or neatly aestheticised".

Dismantling of memory