Drawing (from) the Bombay Plague
The workshop 'Drawing (from) the Bombay Plague' by artist Ranjit Kandalgaonkar gave participants an opportunity to interrogate, discuss and enliven the comparison between a historical pandemic and the unique situation the world found itself in of a pandemic that was unfolding in real-time. The workshop was based on Ranjit’s work ‘Drawing the Bombay Plague,’ an image that served as a reminder of the unfortunate arrival and the imagination of the early days of a pandemic. The drawing hinted at the generic mistakes, callous attitudes of government officials, panic of populations unfamiliar with diseases, information about diseases that was not disseminated, and the glaring mistakes that we as society continued to repeat.
About the Artist
Ranjit Kandalgaonkar lives and works in Mumbai, and his art practice primarily comprises a lens directed at the urban context of cities. Projects such as cityinflux, Gentricity, build/browse and Stories of Philanthropic Trusts map vulnerability within redevelopment strategies of urbanisation, record anomalous histories, or document timelines and “blindspots”—alternate markers of a city that’s unraveling. A study of the combative histories of reclamation and speculation has led to projects such as Isles amidst reclamation and Seven Isles Unclaimed, which map ever-diminishing geographies.
Ranjit’s awards and grants include the Majlis Visual Arts Fellowship, the U.D.R.I Architectural Fellowship, the Leverhulme Artist Residency, the SAI Harvard University Artist Residency, and the Seed Funding Award-Wellcome Trust.
