Overview

Venue: Art Houz, Chennai | Chennai Photo Biennale 2019

Amshu Chukki’s practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video and sculpture. In his ongoing engagement with the notion of fictionalized spaces and narratives of dystopias, he is interested in the manner in which the boundaries between the real and illusory can fold into one another; keeping in mind an understanding of the filmic and in particular – the tropes of film noir. Further, questioning the ideas of the ‘site’, ‘site specificity’ and ‘site informativity’, his work tries to invite and involve audiences to speculate on the meaning and nature of the fictionalized worlds brought to life. Shot on deserted film sets, Amshu’s work takes us on a tour of a city that is both ancient and futuristic. With time suspended on its surface and left in limbo, the sites seem like allegories to the future of our ancestors. The Film City, with its constructed hospitals, hotels, and neighborhoods—resembles a deserted post-apocalyptic city, whose inhabitants have disappeared. The tour bus, loaded with visitors, navigates this seeming abandonment of this city. Along the tour, the guide re-imagines Film City’s desertion and narrates fictions that originate from this site.

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