Rupali Gupte, Prasad Shetty, 2023, shown at the Dhaka Art Summit, in the exhibition, ‘Very Small Feelings’, within the larger thematic ‘Bonna’ curated by the Akansha Rastogi and Diana Campbell

Immersive bamboo, wood and paper mache structure co-commissioned by Dhaka Art Summit and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

A large dreamlike structure looming above the ground, on multiple legs, resembling a gaping mouth, a belly, a nest or part of something, has emerged from the heart of the Summit. It is a cave, a fruit, a half-eaten vegetable, an egg, a whale, a boat, a womb and all that you may want it to be. It invites, signals, summons different oralities, gestures and movements from mouth to ear to books. Come, inhabit and perform in the Belly whenever you are passing by.

Come to the Belly

to huddle together and read.

Come to the Belly

when you are looking for

something familiar within the unfamiliar,

to close your eyes and sit quietly,

to read something aloud,

to project your voice into the scape of the Summit,

to read languages you do not know how to read.

Come to the Belly of the Strange

when you want to ask ‘What May I be?’

 

Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty’s ‘Belly of the strange’ is a transactional space, meant to house books that take us into the wondrous world of stories and illustrations for children and the child in us. Drawing on a feminine form in an otherwise hard edged masculine architectural world, the voluminous belly with its stage-like stepped access, is a poetic ascent to another register, to very small feelings. The first avatar of the Belly as a bulbous form was conjured at MACBA, Spain in 2018 as part of the exhibition ‘In the Open or in Stealth, The Unruly Presence of an Intimate Future’ curated by Raqs Media Collective. At DAS, the Belly is part of the exhibition ‘Very Small Feelings’ curated by Akansha Rastogi, Diana Campbell and Ruxmini Chowdhury. Here it becomes a performative functional ground for multiple activities, to gather daily exchanges and facilitate kinships with strangeness, strange forms and ideas. It is located within the larger exhibition ‘Bonna’ curated by Diana Campbell. The belly with its multiple legs responds to Bonna as it lifts the space of inhabitation gently above the ground. It becomes a carnivalesque space that responds to the fair-like atmosphere in Dhaka. 

 

Gupte and Shetty trained as architects and urbanists, jointly run Bard Studio, a multidisciplinary practice that traverses between architecture, art and urban studies, and are founder members of the School of Environment and Architecture in Mumbai. Their research and practice sits at the intersection of experimental pedagogy exploring different aspects of urban form and experience, and building environments and objects inspired by everyday functional urban forms that enable transactional capacities of inhabitation and engagement .

For instance, the one-foot paan (betel-nut) shop in a dense Mumbai chawl is both a design intervention and accidental functional innovation of a local shopkeeper.