Gallery 7

 I once was alive by Shahid Datawala

Shahid Datawala finds poetry in parked cars that sit silently in spaces and hint at the journeys they’ve survived and witnessed.

Like trees growing in the middle of nowhere. Like nostalgia and the distance we seek from it. Like unresolved knots. These silently parked cars are complex portraits of journeys and hunts.

These rust eaten cars caught my attention a little over a decade ago. These images are as much portraits of the foregrounded objects as they are portraits of their (erstwhile) owners.

Interactions based on ownership collapse and become obsolete. Finally freed from their owner’s nostalgia every now and then these ghosts show up on roadside corners. Found outside their junkyard dwellings the cars are more often than not found in the company of dilapidated architecture that is also negotiating similar situations and contexts.

Through these complex portraits I allow myself to think and speculate across unresolved debates— such as machine, nature, culture, change and habit—these objects encompass.

-Shahid Datawala

Preview: Thursday, March 12, 7pm – 10pm
Until Wednesday, April 15

G3, Ground Floor, Oricon House, 12/14 Rampart Row, K. Dubash Marg, Kala Ghoda

022 2218 3996

www.gallery7.com // contactus@gallery7.com

Open Monday to Saturday, 10.30am – 7pm; Sunday, by appointment

Directions: Next to Bombay Blue Restaurant