The Dream Box (2017)

Abstract

The Dream Box (2017) is a work that relies on a simple gesture of replication. The artist was invited to create a work that recalled Mumbai's only drive-in movie theater, which was shut down to make way for a high-rise office development.The original projectors, which belonged to Mumbai's erstwhile Drive-in Cinema, now stand as silent symbols of a romantic past. They stand along with their replicas in wood, painstakingly hand carved with recycled teak wood that would have belonged to various dismantled structures and homes in and around Mumbai. The artist plays on the assumed value of recalling history through a contemporary gesture of representation.The theatricality of representation and its subsequent effects are brought into focus. The objects have been removed from their functional context, have been emptied (or not at all) of their symbolic meaning, and are now reused simply as props for a performance of our everyday lives. The Dream Box inverts the projector's gaze from the screen to the audience as the spectator becomes the screen for the projection of self and society.