Old Ambassador car showcases changing India

in art exhibit
New Delhi, Nov 30 (PTI) A disintegrating ambassador car at a shopping centre here has been remade in soft material as a fragile historical relic by a UK artist to reflect the connections between commerce and culture against the changing context of a globalised India.

Arist Robert E D'' Souza took the car, which was lying in a state of disuse, at the DDA shopping centre in Sheik Sarai here to illustrate the larger picture of the economic changes taking place in India.

"The ambassador car to me becomes an icon of India''s past. For me it is very poignant because it is a symbol of the old world and have used it as a key sculpture piece in my show," says D''Souza whose first solo exhibition "Outside India" is being shown here.

Using the pretext of the W+K art gallery moving from a shopping complex to a new location in Delhi, D''Souza explores his pet research concern of studying the relationship between identity, location and context via the medium of photographs and sculptures.

"The principle is to document the situation of an old gallery while people were still working there. As the gallery shifts to a new upscale swanky location in a mall I have used the process to illustrate the economic changes happening in India," says D''Souza.

The artist, designer and academician who has a global art and research practice that overlaps areas of visual art, cultural study and social science in relation to India, says the movement of the gallery provided him with the opportunity to "document aspect of ordinary life at a time when things are already changing."
The solo exhibition is accompanied by a book launch by "Outside India: Dialogues and Documents of Art and Social Change", considers new and previous works produced in India by D''Souza. .