tushar joag

Transiting between his roles as artist and activist, Tushar Joag imagines projects that integrate aesthetic experience and social vision. For over a decade, Joag’s work has created a discursive platform for urban issues through a visual practice that is both educative and artistic. Born in Bombay and educated at the J.J. School of Art and Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda, the artist’s consciousness of the limitations in using art for social change led to a decision in the late 1990s to produce only work with a political, critical edge. For five years, beginning in 1998, Joag participated as a founder-member in Open Circle, an artist-led initiative that uses artwork and activism to probe local, contemporary politics.

In 2004, Joag activated UNICELL, a mock corporation that publicizes common problems in Bombay by mimicking the workings of single-bodied governmental bureaucracy. As an artistic project, Joag intentionally invents unrealistic solutions that would be impossible to implement. UNICELL’s fictitious interventions have satirized the city’s transformation into the next Shanghai and elaborated a plan for it to become the next “Venice of the East.” On its website, www.unicellpwc.org, Joag explains the position from which he develops projects: “art is responsible for maintaining cultural continuity as well as providing ruptures that bring a fresh outlook through its questioning of the present.”

Joag’s first solo exhibition “Willing Suspension,” held at Gallery Chemould in 2005, invoked viewers to understand the large-scale, physical problems besetting Bombay’s overcrowded suburban rail network. The artist’s Commuter Attachment System installed the façade of a western rail suburban car onto the gallery wall, appending to it an inventory of ‘attachments’ that could alleviate the stresses of rush-hour travel. Rather than adopt a behalfist, subaltern perspective to speak for the city’s masses, Joag’s work struggles through the frustrations of contemporary life with humor and hyperbole, reminding the public of the full scope of urban reality.

Beth Citron

Also visit: www.unicellpwc.org