As you enter Baro, a vibrant contemporary furniture store that boasts of bright turquoise exteriors nestled in a labyrinth of alleys at Sun Mill Compound in Lower Parel, you are transported to another world. A large installation of old magazines, carefully folded and put together by the Akanksha Foundation, symbolising the concept of Tree of Life, welcomes you. An attractive display of wooden spin tops and brass board games that are part of ‘Spin-o-sphere’, an interactive display that celebrates the humble top, spins you back to childhood.
As you turn left, your eyes are glued to a wooden pram where several rag dolls are jostling for space. Created by French textile artist Brigitte Singh, these handmade dolls are dressed in colourful, block print outfits that are an archival display of Singh’s works over the years. These are just some of the interesting artifacts that comprise Everyday, Play A Little , a one-of-a-kind experiential collaboration between Baro (which translates to 12 in Bengali) and Surya and Ritu Singh, founders of Wolf, a Jaipur-based art creative.
As part of Everyday, Play A Little, Baro (the brainchild of former film and advertising producer Srila Chatterjee and designer Siddharth Sirohi) has been converted into a doll’s house where visitors unravel things and installations reminiscent of childhood. Chatterjee says, “The context of the show is that you can play and have fun yet produce great things. At Baro and Wolf, we share the same ideology – of making sustainable things from discarded products that have a certain playfulness. It is also a reminder that no matter what we do, it is important to never forget that there must be time in our lives to just play. We need to sustain our own lives with things that matter.”
Seeking inspiration from the abandoned dollhouse that they had created in Jaipur earlier this year using scrap material, Ritu and Surya, who prefer to use just their first name, have curated this show by sourcing products and artworks from their network of collectors, curators and scrap dealers in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
The show features artisans from eight design centres including Priyanka Shah of Shed who has created the wooden tops, Padmini Bika of O’de’Gulabee Jaipur whose old brass utensils, tiffins, dabbas, barnis and thalis are on display and independent artiste Anjana Nair who has created anthropomorphic flowers and leaves on discarded chairs that can be used as wall hangings. She has transformed a bathtub into a chic chair by painting it white and etching out a sketch of a black octopus on it.
Surya and Ritu have created 12 installations by sourcing old, black-and-white photographs from scrap dealers and placing them in myriad memory boxes. Ritu elaborates, “Westarted off by sourcing discarded photos and didn’t have a story in mind initially. The pictures helped us develop the stories and take our vision forward. ‘Bits of us’ denotes how we are stuck in a digital age where we can’t survive without technology. We have juxtaposed this with black-and-white photographs to show how earlier people spent time with their families and loved ones. For ‘Shikaar’, we have used photos of both men and women to depict how hunting is like a mating game. In the case of ‘Electric Love’, we found an image of the Taj Mahal followed by an old ceramic switchboard and we decided to combine the two and portray how love can light up one’s life.”
Determined to eschew materialism for passion, Surya and Ritu set up Wolf in 2014 to promote talented, indigenous artists and collectors and propagate sustainability. Referring to her vast network of collectors and scrap dealers with whom she often collaborates, Ritu says “We have a special selection of people who are like us. We are not in the rat race or motivated by money but prefer to call ourselves outsider artistes and co-creators.”
Quiz her about the significance of the name Wolf and she smiles and says, “Wolves have a negative image but actually they are good leaders and focus a lot on their kids. Our effort is geared towards encouraging people to think out of the box and we, too, work a lot with kids.”
Everyday, Play a Little is ongoing at Baro, Sun Mill Compound, Lower Parel until October 11
