Photographic documentation of “Container” (2011)

Sculptural intervention in Bodh Gaya, India, with turmeric, cow dung, soil, grass and labour

Hole size: 5m x 1.2m

Description

For this piece I created an invisible public sculpture. I wanted to draw attention to the momentary, sensory nature of the experience of art.

The viewing audience was witness to a process of continuous change that intimately involves all the bodily senses, memory and quiet self-reflection. In order to do this I decided to create a large-scale, process-based sculptural intervention in the park, one that could organically disappear without leaving any trace of its presence.

I decided to dig a hole that forms the shape of a steel container or ‘bowl’ in the earth. This shape was smoothed out and covered with cow dung. Finally another layer of turmeric (or ‘haldi’ as it is locally known) was added. The hole was left open for two days after which point it was filled with soil and neatly covered with cut-out sections of grass. At this point the work became invisible again.

Of course the container-shape would continue to exist just beneath the surface of the grass and thus members of the public would be able to literally stand on the sculpture without ever knowing it.  Some of the regular visitors to the park like the children, the park guards and other nearby residents had firsthand knowledge of the momentary transformation of this section of otherwise empty, non-descriptive land and may remember it in future.

It is perhaps interesting to note that by filling up the empty container it actually over-flowed: the lip of the bowl is sunk into the soil. Thus it may be argued that at the point that the grass layer is placed on top of the filled container, the entire surface of the park became a part of the sculpture.

There are numerous inter-cultural references in the work that I have not delved into in this short text. But I do wish to briefly draw attention to one that is important for me. There are a number of invisible networks that connect the world. For example, owing to the fabled spice route, South Africa came into existence as halfway stop/ trading station between Europe and India. In turn Gandhi later spent some time working in colonial South Africa as a lawyer, an experience that contributed no small part to his doctrine of political change through peaceful resistance.