JITISH KALLAT | Dawn Chorus 9

Acquired from Albion Gallery, London, 19 November 2007

London, Albion Gallery, Jitish Kallat: Unclaimed Baggage, 10 October - 19 November 2007

M. Price, Jitish Kallat: Unclaimed Baggage, Albion, London, 2007, illustration p. 59

There is light wear around the edges of the canvas. Very minor accretions and stains are visible upon close inspection. The paint surface is irregular but this appears to be inherent. Small spots of craquelure and loss are apparent under close scrutiny. A vertical undulation is present along the lower edge of the canvas and there are minor undulations in the corners. On the bronzes, tarnishing, wear and light scratches are present. The painting and sculptures are in good overall condition, as viewed.
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Jitish Kallat’s Dawn Chorus series reflects upon the socio-economic effects of globalisation on the city of Mumbai. Dawn Chorus foregrounds the disadvantaged and their daily grind, a result of living in the most populous city in India. Based on photographic images, the paintings in Dawn Chorus depict the faces of young boys who Kallat saw selling popular international books at street traffic lights in Mumbai.  Given the monumental size and the colour palette of the canvases, the paintings resemble city billboards, an abundant feature in the landscape of the city. The artist mounts his canvases on bronze sculptures that are recreations of gargoyles that adorn the city’s 130-year-old Victoria Terminus train station. Central to Dawn Chorus 9, as in the other paintings in the series, is the compelling image of the boys’ hair wherein a single figure becomes a composite of many stories. Everyday imagery, traffic, people and animals pile up like a crumbling cascade of narratives, as if the hair was a manifestation of their inner exchanges.

Kallat speaks with great admiration of the book-selling children who readily navigate this metropolis: “The children sell these books with self-assured rigour. Often illiterate, they would offer a long sermon about the merits of the book. To me these young children almost become like mascots for the resilience of [a] tough city such as Mumbai. Above the forehead are rendered a thousand colliding stories; a complex narrative of 18 million people living on a tiny island of 468 square kilometres”. (J. Kallat quoted in Jitish Kallat: 365 Lives, Arario Gallery, Beijing, 2007, p. 26)