Urban realities of two cities are sculpted by Indian artists

The cities we live in today are landscapes of ever-increasing contradictions: dense but personal, intimate but lonely, lonely but still somewhat like home to us. Another location in which other environments may be replicated, frequently while maintaining a feeling of how we previously experienced them, is art. 11 artists are attempting to unite the two in an ongoing show at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston as they construct their imagined urban realities of five Asian megacities: Mumbai, Delhi, Seoul, Beijing, and Shanghai. The exhibition, titled "Megacities Asia," becomes the greatest contemporary exposition put on by the museum and brings Indian artists Hema Upadhyay, Subodh Gupta, Asim Waqif, and Aaditi Joshi to Boston. 

Megacities Asia was put together after four years of study, travel, and execution and is now on display through June 17. This includes 19 substantial sculptures and installations that stake out territory across the museum's galleries, on its front lawn, and in the surrounding area. When you enter the main exhibition room, you are greeted with a 40-foot array of Subodh Gupta's signature brass and steel cookware. With the installation of 48 kitchen racks, each containing neatly placed pots, plates, utensils, and glasses, Gupta imports the Indian kitchen onto a museum wall. 

In a way, Subodh Gupta's sculpture, which grew out of his found-object art practice, is most in line with the exhibition's requirements. According to Laura Weinstein, co-curator and the museum's head of South Asian and Islamic art, "We were seeking for artists that were integrating daily materials in their work, and working through a process of accumulation of things in their urban context." Beyond having an appropriate shape, Gupta's work is disassociated from the environment in which it is meant to be used. The artist's work questions the impact of globalization on regional customs and dietary values, as well as family and community identities. It also evokes Delhi's tightly packed urban neighborhood. 

Scale and size acquire importance in Hema Upadhyay's installation that goes beyond simple magnitude. The box-like construction, named 8'x12' after the typical family unit size in Dharavi, is constructed to its original size using the same supplies as its occupants: aluminium and plastic sheets, vehicle trash, hardware, and other discarded items. The project, called Build me a nest so I may rest, seems like a sizable work of art from the outside, with elegant, handcrafted detail interwoven throughout. Step inside of it, and the same structure subtly contracts into a stuffy, constricted area.  

The two works by Mumbai artist Joshi and Delhi artist Waqif, who both address the effects of fast growth on their cities' environments, are included among the other artworks in the exhibition. An architect-turned-artist, Waqif, bemoans the disappearance of bamboo as Delhi's current development project is more dominated by high-tech construction techniques and supplies.  

Mumbai artist Joshi chooses plastic as her medium in what initially appears to be a commentary of the city's consumerist lifestyle and the effects of the garbage it produces on the environment. Joshi admits the contribution of accumulating plastic on the 2005 Mumbai floods' worsening. In the end, she refers to her artistic pursuit of the subject as a "quest for beauty amidst rubbish," urging her audience to think about — and, in a somewhat difficult way, to analyse — the impact of contemporary waste on her city, as though there could be more to it than only environmental risks.