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mithu sen

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Shop Lifting 2014

Express Avenue Shopping Mall, Chennai
Art Chennai, India

Shop Lifting was a site-specific interactive project that “lifted” the local roadside flower vendors from their usual surroundings of traditional markets in Chennai to a high-end shopping mall.... relocating them in a luxury section of Express Avenue Mall space designed by me. Visitors were allowed to engage with the vendors and buy garlands through the usual routine of bargaining.

The vendors brought with them their personal and sentimental belongings including the photographs of their immediate family and ancestors, along with their own aesthetic sensibilities to display in the shop interior. A detailed research was involved in meeting the local flower vendors, after which a few were selected for the site. Even the shopping board which was put up on the shop was in the local language i.e. Tamil, in sharp contrast to the shops of established international brands with their respective names in English.
This dual temporary migration of the flower-vendors to and from the mall space over a span of two weeks created a pattern of desires, design, tradition and economics, simultaneously addressing the impact of migration on people at a micro-level. Understanding the network of consumerism and its impact on different socio-economic groups became an integral part of this project.

projects

2023
mOTHERTONGUE
iWITNESS
“I am from there. I am from here”
mOTHER I SPELL YOU WRONG

2022
Until you 206

2021
Be Beyond Being
Until You..

2020
Uncatharsis
BERKELEY FOR SALE !!
QR
Unlockdown

2019
UnMansplaining
Lunch is cancelled
How to be a SUCKcessful Artist
100 (un)silent ways

2018
UnMYthU: UnKIND(s) Alternatives

2017
Unlynching
Sounding Drawing
Unline
Unhome in City IF Angels
We Unfinish each other
I Replace You
Embodied Language
Return Gifts: For Sale

2016
(Left Untold)
Aphasia
Kenopsia
Mis(s)Guide

2015
Tongue that won't stop wounding
Unwor(l)dly
Nonversation

2014
Border Unseen
Shop Lifting
I have only one language; it is not mine
Poems Declined
A ° V O I D

2013
I Am a Poet
Deafening Silence
Same River Twice
Artist: Unknown
Cannibal Lullaby

2012
I am not me
Devoid
In House Adoption
Twinkle Twinkle

2011
MOU (Museum of Unbelongings)
Once upon a sari
Ahh Taj !!
For(e)play
In Transit
No thing

2010
graffiti
Black Candy (Iforgotmypenisathome)
Unwanted

2009
Abstract Cabinet
Dropping Gold, Dropping Gold
Me two

2008
Nothing lost in translation
I dig,I look down

2007
Non spinal
Freemithu 2007-ongoing
Half Full
Kamdhenu
Indubala and her Unbelongings

2006
I chew, I bite, The Unknown
Icarus
All that's solid melts into air
It's good to be a queen
Letters on the beach
Drawing Room
Ephemeral Affair
Being Anastacia

2005
Spiritual materialistic

2004
No star, No land, No word, No Commitment
Breathing
Burnt by the sun
Outside the war zone

2003
I hate pink
Twilight Zone

2002
No way out

2001
Unbelongings

2000
Can we really look beyond the map?
Hair Unbelongings