Artefacting Public Art + Research Practice

• About The Project
• About Dharavi

About The Project

“We immerse ourselves in extremity to experience and excavate from a bee hive of humanity.”

At its core, this project is about using art to tell the story of a settlement, people, culture and economy, in danger of being displaced by contemporary urbanization.

Urbanist and visual artist Alex White Mazzarella and fellow city planner/photographer Casey Nolan will fully immerse themselves in Dharavi and the extreme contrasts of Mumbai in the winter of 2010 to document and manifest their experiences as they engage the humanity and society of the people…their culture, energy, and ultimately identities… through artwork.

Originally Inspired by the overseas cultural interchange projects of Robert Rauschenberg, Alex White Mazzarella will create mixed media paintings with local ingredients, local energy and local color to explore and transmit place, human phenomenon and the existential realities of Dharavi and other extremities of Mumbai… providing insight and discourse on the current state of change, progress, community, society and growth. Portland Oregon-based city planner and filmmaker Casey Nolan will photograph and provide narrative to the immersion via a daily photojournalism.

With combined backgrounds in environmental science, economics, urban planning, and sociology, a documentary video will record their immersion and residency through a behind-the-scenes approach, providing the end viewer with a glimpse into the emotional and physical realities of life in India’s largest “slum”. Moreover, the two will utilize this unique opportunity to explore the controversial development issues of the local community through a visual storytelling that investigates and examines the auxiliary issues of sustainability, globalization, and cultural/social cohesiveness in a context of extreme contemporary urbanization and growth.

The project and resulting documentary will bypass the material to explore value and humanity as it exists between people and their place… Dharavi and other Mumbai locals. More intimately, the artists hope to bring light to what is truly valuable and important in people’s lives and communities… the way people treat each other, and the moments they share together. In the end, Artefacting Mumbai is about embracing humanity as it exists in a world that many people believe it doesn’t.

All material and experiences will be exhibited in an interactive webpage and in multi-media exhibitions that are planned for display in the Spring of 2011 in New York City, Boston, and Portland Oregon.