Maximum capacity 3, 2019. Steel and reclaimed wood, 94 x 68 x 22 cm. Two views of work.
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qa SHOVAN GANDHI / PORTRAIT: DAYANITA SINGH
Engaging the Informal City: A Conversation with Martand Khosla by Chitra Balasubramaniam november/december n
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martand khosla Chitra Balasubramaniam: You started your practice as an architect in 2000 and began experimenting with installations in 2010. What prompted the new avenue of expression? Martand Khosla: In my early years of practice as an archT H I S PA G E :
Lahori Gate, Polyclinic for the Destitute, New Delhi, India, 2011. OPPOSITE:
Upwards (reaching for the light) (detail), 2018–19. Steel and reclaimed wood, dimensions variable.
itect, I was very keen to design and build for the less privileged in our society, something that I continue to do in my current architectural work. While researching and interacting with potential users of these buildings, I had intensely visceral, and often unexpected, learning experiences about the city. Academic propositions were replaced with much more complex realities, and in particular, the complexity of informality and migration remained with me. I initially explored these thoughts through limited teaching assignments and writing, but they were not satisfying. I was searching for a medium that would best facilitate my intellectual and formal explorations. Artworks became the medium because they could help articulate and penetrate what I was seeing around me, what I gathered from readings, and what was happening the world over—especially in the cities of the developing world, where there is greater pressure on resources. While I continued to draw and sculpt after I started my architectural studio, it took me several years to be able to articulate a formal language and an intellectual position that created a space for me to begin an artistic practice. I had studied art in my final two years at school, and my education at the Architectural Association furthered not only my skills in building and drawing, but also my intellectual point of view, allowing me to focus attention on the informal city, which I worked on consistently through my years as an architecture student. Formally, the art practice is distinct from my architectural practice in terms of materials, methods, and even time. However, they converge in terms of thinking around the city, and I believe they complement each other. CB: What were your first works like? MK: Around 2010, when one of our buildings—an
HIV and TB polyclinic for the poor in the old city of Delhi—was being completed during the build-up to the Commonwealth Games, we witnessed the increased vulnerability of migrants as the authorities
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THIS PAGE: SAURABH PANDEY / OPPOSITE: SHOVAN GANDHI
Martand Khosla’s sculptures capture the evolutionary forces at work in the modern city, with its constant churning, its shifting appearance and demographics, and the dynamics of the divide between rich and poor. A practicing architect as well as an artist, Khosla draws inspiration from his experience of building in India, where every inch of space is contested, where sleek new constructions rise in stark contrast to surrounding slums, where the shanty dwellings of migrant construction laborers offer no more than minimum shelter. Architectural rigor and precision define his forms, yet his sculptures are not idealized and not devoid of feeling. The realities and the intangibles of urban life come through with quiet dignity, embedded into the works’ recycled building materials and brick dust.
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At a construction site, everything is covered with brick dust. There is no difference between the worker and the material.
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martand khosla attempted to clean up the image of New Delhi. A slum near the site of our polyclinic was demolished, an act that rendered homeless the very people for whom we were building the health facility. My first sculptural and paper works emerged from the remains of that demolished slum in 2012. In the Other Rooms, one of the first sculptures I made and exhibited, consists of a series of four-inch Perspex cubes containing individual domestic objects that have no scale relation to each other, including a tap, a light bulb, a child’s toy, a chair, and a clothes-drying line—each one covered in red brick dust. I wanted to remove all context of a home from the individual objects within the vitrines while creating a deep sense of domesticity.
OPPOSITE AND THIS PAGE: COURTESY THE ARTIST
CB: In a brief span of time, you have produced a sizeable amount of work. Do you begin with a concept in your mind, working toward an exhibition focused on a certain theme, or do you work intuitively? MK: I don’t work toward shows as such, so the studio
remains a place of constant creation, and often destruction. Along the way, when I think something is emerging that needs showing, validation, or feedback, I begin to consider a show. So, while the pieces in my recent show at Nature Morte Gallery were made over a period of a year, I had spent nearly two years prior to that researching and testing the works and the ideas that were eventually articulated in those works. In early works that explored the relationship between the state and migrants, I used government rubber-stamp imprints, which are ubiquitous in all dealings with the government and a sign of legitimacy in India. Other works used printed legal judgments to explore changing judicial attitudes toward migrant labor and the informal settlements of urban slums. An initial version of Form Follows Function (2010) was made by weaving strips of printed legal judgments to form bags. These bags carry the tools of daily wage laborers, which identify their trade. Another work, Without any Title (2010), used rubber stamps to create portraits of workers in reference to administrative power over identities. 21 Articles (2009), a sculpture of fruit made from paper legal judgments and strewn over the ground, spoke to the dissonance between legal judgments that protect workers’ rights and societal attitudes toward workers of the informal economy.
CB: Your work draws heavily on the socioeconomic struggle that ensues during a city’s growth and development. What is it about the city that so commands your attention? MK: The city has been central to my thought process
FROM OPPOSITE:
Form Follows Function, 2010. Woven digital print on paper, dimensions variable. In the Other Rooms 1, 2012. Brick dust and Perspex, 10 vitrines, 4 x 4 x 4 in. each.
as an architect. Societies move through different stages of growth, upheaval, decline, and reconfiguration. For India and a large part of the developing world, the latter half of the 20th century marked a critical moment of human migration, rapid urbanization, and class conflict. This phase of the Indian mega-city has been of great interest to me. My art practice over the years has created an intellectual space that allows me to think through, prod, and question various aspects of the city. The city is not a static form; it is a constantly evolving organism—and through these works, I am able to explore multiple dimensions without being limited by a specific brief. Most of my explorations are concentrated around the informal city: migrant workers, informal and illegal settlements, and the power dynamics between the state and the citizens. In Joule
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martand khosla (2019), the wooden door in the shape of a massive whirl represents the constant churning of the city. My hands-on training as a carpenter helped. CB: Brick dust from construction sites has been one of your preferred mediums. How did you chance upon it, and how did it become so integral to your work? What other materials have you used? MK: Brick can be powdered and made into innumerable
shapes, with innumerable connotations. In The Spirit Earns (2013), it was made into an urn, its disintegration symbolic of the urn used to carry ashes. Systema Naturae (2013) was inspired by the workers at a project site near Mysore. At a construction site, everything is covered with brick dust. There is no difference between the worker and the material. I started by spraying brick dust on elements of my work, and I have used it in countless ways. Though I didn’t use too much of it in my last show, I am not yet done with the material. I have also worked with wood, steel, and concrete— all construction materials. In 1:2500 (2019), I used reclaimed wood sourced from various areas of Delhi that are being redeveloped. It shows how new cities and typologies emerge from the remains of old ones. Interestingly, all of the works in my recent show, except for the series informally called “the doors,” were made with the same components: recycled wood from demolished housing colonies across Delhi, cut into a particular form that I’ve developed over the years. Construction materials have remained consistent in my sculptural works. For me, there is a great joy in appropriating architectural materials and pushing their boundaries to a point where new, unexpected forms and uses emerge; these forms maintain a strong link to the original building block.
the design of single buildings within a vast urban fabric. While this engagement gives me personal insight into some aspects of what shapes a city, it is inadequate in terms of allowing me to engage with macro-level
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SHOVAN GANDHI
CB: In addition to considering larger urban and social issues, you also narrow your focus to the house, which forms a recurrent theme. Is that because you’ve designed a lot of houses or because you consider cities as primarily about people and their homes? MK: My engagement with the city remains limited to
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martand khosla OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM:
Watt, 2019. Wood, 56 x 208 x 66 cm. Joule, 2019. Wood, 259.1 x 88.9 cm. T H I S PA G E :
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Inventory of the Possible, 2012. Brick dust and Perspex, 12 x 12 x 10 ft.
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martand khosla There is a great joy in appropriating architectural materials and pushing their boundaries to a point where new, unexpected forms emerge. structures and processes. It is not common for municipal agencies in India to involve architectural practices in the design of our cities. By and large, we remain outsiders within the planning process. When constructing for the city, I come in contact with its transformations—through informal housing settlements and the journeys of migrant construction workers—as well as the points of friction between citizens and the state. As a result, my profession becomes a great facilitator for engaging with the city, its evolution, and with the people who inhabit it, from the richest to the poorest. Some domestic scenes and images have been particularly moving. One work captures the image of slippers placed outside the home of a migrant worker at a work site. There is very little distinction between indoors and outdoors in these camps, yet before entering, small gestures—such as the removal of slippers—connote the sanctity of the inner space. The basic shape of a house has occurred several times in my work, as in Vanishing Point (2013) and Inventory of the Possible (2012). CB: Do you propose solutions to urban ills as an architect or an artist? MK: My last show explored thoughts around the city at
a larger scale, particularly in the “Maximum capacity” series (2018–19), Upwards (reaching for the light) (2018–19), and Studies in Radiance (2018). The same ideas are explored at a more micro level through the doors Watt, Joule, and Pascal. The city is the single most significant terrain of this century. For me, several lifetimes will not be enough to explore and engage with it. One of the main failings of our cities has been the idea of silver-bullet solutions to urban concerns. Future mappings of the city need to embrace engineering, planning, architecture, sociology, and pedagogy, as well as legal and health concerns. Cities across the Global South have tried various solutions and systems—some successful, others not so much. They are all points of learning for our cities.
1:2500, 2019. Reclaimed wood, dimensions variable.
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