From Debris We Rise

From Debris, We Rise is an amalgamation of recent works from M Pravat’s studio, which are
all mimetic transmutations of the context it is nestled within, the village of Rajpur in
Chattarpur, Delhi. Delhi, once a city, then a state, eventually began to spill into its neighbouring
states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, encompassing the Delhi National Capital
Region (NCR). This horizontal expansion also remarkably brings about rapid contractions of
neighbourhoods old and new, as they begin to choke with newer, unplanned and occasionally
semi-legal constructions and additions to keep up with the city’s accelerationist model of
development. This is especially the case with Chattarpur, a locality that is spread along the
Delhi-Gurgaon highway, strategically located between both cities as an overlooked conduit
of people, traffic, businesses of all scales, factories, cottage industries and affordable
accommodations to suit the needs of its older inhabitants that desperately seek profit from
the multitudinal influx of people into the city each day looking to make a home there.
Perhaps as an unconscious, residual impulse from Pravat’s early encounters with the
experimental theatre scene in Kolkata where he grew up, and the villages of West Bengal,
essaying plural roles as scenographer, prop designer, and voice actor, his practice consistently
attempts to critically reinterpret and perform in the studio, processes that he observes in
the world around him. The mise en scène is set by discarded debris from demolitions and
constructions in Chattarpur that he collects and brings to his studio, which consequently
comes to be doused in a veneer of brick dust. The sensorial environment of the construction
site is mirrored by the studio as well with its temporary asbestos roof, pliability to the
extreme climatic conditions of Delhi, and hazardous material residue, while also echoing
its acoustics. Within its confines, he follows methods of making that are similar to those
that are familiar to the building industry, collaborating with stone workers and brick masons
to render works that speak to the urbanisation of the city. His process alternates between
the subtractive Brechtian aesthetics that perhaps come to him from his engagement with
theatre and an alchemical metamorphosing of drab debris into softer, delicate forms that
reclaim the ugliness of redevelopment in the locality, which once used to be forested land.
The works are material testimonies of infinite expansion, and abstract actors performing the
logic of materialism.
At Bungalow 8, in the underbelly of the Wankhede Stadium where the structural formations
that support this iconic theatre of athletics and nationalist machismo reveal themselves in the
ceiling, the exhibition dialogues with the space, formulating a self-referential interrogation
of the ‘foundation’ of built structures. Insignia imagined from broken jalis and repurposed
construction material forge columns—a built form that signifies power and grandeur—to be
mirrored into infinity, rising endlessly. Another series of works crafted from brick dust and
slate indicates waning space in the city, and the obscuring of the moon in the sky amidst
high rises in inverted perspective, as if we are looking down upon the Earth from the sky. An
outline map of Rajpur is cut across by a red hot laser light, responding to rapidly rising
temperatures of the earth and the ecological crisis prompted by unsustainable approaches
that favour the rise of capital. These works are anchored to the studio of the artist where these
considerations transpire in his treatment of some of the substances that flag anthropogenic
interference upon the surface of the planet. The texture of the studio/site is revealed, and
the romance of development is stripped away with acid and embellished with debris and
forms that demystify the gleam of a newly built structure. What rises from debris shall
also return to debris, hopefully with some permanence as these practices are increasingly
acknowledged as unsustainable in the public imagination.
— Anushka Rajendran, 2024