You Always Step into the Same River, by Atul Bhalla

My sustained preoccupation with the water in Delhi, India resulting in ‘Yamuna Walk’ and ‘I was not waving but drowning’ both executed on or around the same site on the western Yamuna bank, which forms the basis of my diverse practice leading to questions of distribution, regulation, commodification and pollution of the River. I have over the years attempted to explore its physical, mythical, historical, spiritual and political significance in relation to the population it sustains. Attempting the political through the poetical. My attempt is to understand water as a repository of history, meaning and myth; the way I perceive it, feel it, drink it, swim in it and sink in it or will drown in it.

Atul Bhalla has explored the physical, historical, and political significance of water in the urban environment of New Delhi through artworks that incorporate sculpture, painting, installation, video, photography, and performance. He is SAP’s Virtual Artist-in-Residence in Fall 2020.

His recent solo shows include “Anhedonic Dehiscence” (Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2018), “You always step into the same river” (SepiaEYE, New York, 2015) and “Ya Ki Kuch aur …” (Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2014). He was also the Mellon Artist Research Africa fellow at WITS University 2018, Johannesburg with the project “The Excavated distance of gold,” examining acid mine drainage at the gold mines. Recent group exhibitions have brought his work to FotoFest Biennale Houston in 2016 and 2108, The Pompidou Center, Paris, the IVAM Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, and the Devi Art Foundation in New Delhi. Important  books on his  works are  Yamuna Walk and monograph ’You always step into the same river’.

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Image courtesy of the event organizer.