Rajesh Vora: Everyday Monuments - The Rooftop Sculpture of Punjab

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Rajesh Vora: Everyday Monuments - The Rooftop Sculpture of Punjab Photo Museum Ireland
  • Rajesh Vora: Everyday Monuments - The Rooftop Sculpture of Punjab Photo Museum Ireland
Rajesh Vora: Everyday Monuments - The Rooftop Sculpture of Punjab Photo Museum Ireland
Surrey Art Gallery

Rajesh Vora: Everyday Monuments - The Rooftop Sculpture of Punjab

Description

Striking photography and incisive texts document and reflect on the fascinating and uniquely Punjabi art form of sculptural water tanks.

In the late 1970s, a unique local art form emerged in the villages of Doaba, a rural region of India's Punjab state. Villagers who had moved elsewhere but retained close ties to the region began constructing elaborate multi-storey homes of brick or marble, topped with sculptural watertanks, sometimes called showpieces. Though almost unknown outside of India, in certain areas of the Punjab today homes like these dominate the landscape. The painted cement-and-rebar embellishments are usually individually commissioned, and take various forms including planes, animals, soccer balls, and weightlifters; in all cases, their intent is to announce and honor a family or individual's presence in and connection to the region. Combined with the intricately decorated houses on which they perch, these works represent a merging of art, architecture, and everyday life that transcends conventional design norms to tell a diasporic story in a form that is unique to Punjab.

Mumbai-based photographer Rajesh Vora visited 150 villages over several years to photograph hundreds of these works. In 2022, his photos were exhibited at the Surrey Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada, a major center of the Punjabi diaspora. In addition to over 140 of Vora's photographs, this volume offers texts by Rahul Mehrotra, who observes the hybrid and evolving conceptions of home that these vernacular forms express; Vora and Keith Wallace, the exhibition's curator, who discuss the origins of the works and their travels in the region; Sajdeep Soomal, who locates the sculptures' dreams of technological modernity on a trajectory flowing from the region's agricultural past through to its independence from British colonization; and Satwinder Kaur Bains, who reflects on the nuanced and complex evocations that these photos tease from her own experience of migration.

About the Author

Rajesh Vora is a Mumbai-based photographer focused primarily on architectural and cultural subject matter. He graduated in 1979 from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, where he developed an interest in documenting peoples and regions that are threatened by change. His architectural photography has appeared in Domus (India), Architectural Design (India), Inside OutsideDezeenArchDaily, and COLORS, where he contributed for fifteen years as a photographer, researcher, and writer. His documentary photos have appeared in numerous publications, most recently Kinetic City & Other Essays (2021), Working in Mumbai: RMA Architects (2020), and The Architecture of I. M. Kadri (2016). He has exhibited photographs in group shows in New Delhi, the Canary Islands, The Netherlands, France, and the United States. His ongoing personal project, Everyday Baroque, first appeared as a solo exhibition in 2016 at PHOTOINK, New Delhi. This project was reconceived as Everyday Monuments in 2022 for Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada.

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Description

Striking photography and incisive texts document and reflect on the fascinating and uniquely Punjabi art form of sculptural water tanks.

In the late 1970s, a unique local art form emerged in the villages of Doaba, a rural region of India's Punjab state. Villagers who had moved elsewhere but retained close ties to the region began constructing elaborate multi-storey homes of brick or marble, topped with sculptural watertanks, sometimes called showpieces. Though almost unknown outside of India, in certain areas of the Punjab today homes like these dominate the landscape. The painted cement-and-rebar embellishments are usually individually commissioned, and take various forms including planes, animals, soccer balls, and weightlifters; in all cases, their intent is to announce and honor a family or individual's presence in and connection to the region. Combined with the intricately decorated houses on which they perch, these works represent a merging of art, architecture, and everyday life that transcends conventional design norms to tell a diasporic story in a form that is unique to Punjab.

Mumbai-based photographer Rajesh Vora visited 150 villages over several years to photograph hundreds of these works. In 2022, his photos were exhibited at the Surrey Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada, a major center of the Punjabi diaspora. In addition to over 140 of Vora's photographs, this volume offers texts by Rahul Mehrotra, who observes the hybrid and evolving conceptions of home that these vernacular forms express; Vora and Keith Wallace, the exhibition's curator, who discuss the origins of the works and their travels in the region; Sajdeep Soomal, who locates the sculptures' dreams of technological modernity on a trajectory flowing from the region's agricultural past through to its independence from British colonization; and Satwinder Kaur Bains, who reflects on the nuanced and complex evocations that these photos tease from her own experience of migration.

About the Author

Rajesh Vora is a Mumbai-based photographer focused primarily on architectural and cultural subject matter. He graduated in 1979 from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, where he developed an interest in documenting peoples and regions that are threatened by change. His architectural photography has appeared in Domus (India), Architectural Design (India), Inside OutsideDezeenArchDaily, and COLORS, where he contributed for fifteen years as a photographer, researcher, and writer. His documentary photos have appeared in numerous publications, most recently Kinetic City & Other Essays (2021), Working in Mumbai: RMA Architects (2020), and The Architecture of I. M. Kadri (2016). He has exhibited photographs in group shows in New Delhi, the Canary Islands, The Netherlands, France, and the United States. His ongoing personal project, Everyday Baroque, first appeared as a solo exhibition in 2016 at PHOTOINK, New Delhi. This project was reconceived as Everyday Monuments in 2022 for Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada.

Author Bio

Specifications

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