Artists Jorge Rubio and Amanda Pinatih have kick-started “Museum Dharavi” — which is being pitched as the world’s first “slum museum” on wheels — to showcase local arts and handicrafts. They tell us how they’ve curated their ambitious project, and what their hopes are for the museum.
Artists Jorge Rubio and Amanda Pinatih have kick-started “Museum Dharavi” — which is being pitched as the world’s first “slum museum” on wheels — to showcase local arts and handicrafts. They tell us how they’ve curated their ambitious project, and what their hopes are for the museum.
About five minutes from Dharavi’s busy Kumbharwada signal, amidst flimsy tarpaulin-covered shacks and tin-roofed tenements, a group of children animatedly guides visitors towards their “own” museum. The Design Museum — which opened up on Thursday evening in the heart of Dharavi — is a collaboration between visual artist Jorge Mañes Rubio, art historian Amanda Pinatih and residents of the area.
On its opening night, the 8 ft by 4ft “moving museum” — a colourful collection of objects mounted on a handcart — bore a welcoming look for its many visitors. The items on display included clay teacups and saucers, terracotta water filters, reed brooms and painted wooden objects — all made in Dharavi by the locals.
Jorge and Amanda, who hail from Amsterdam, first came to Dharavi four years ago and were surprised to find that the reality of the area was different from the generally accepted idea of it. “We visited Dharavi in 2012, working for three weeks on a research project,” says Jorge. “And we were really surprised at what we saw. We discovered a lot of positive aspects about the place that you never really hear about. Basically, everything that comes out in the media and in the papers about Dharavi paints it as this apocalyptic place where everything is negative. We decided to focus on the positive things and use design as a tool to dig deeper into what Dharavi is all about. It’s so complex with all these different neighbourhoods and people working together. We were just fascinated and wanted to work with the local makers, and explore new objects and directions in Dharavi.”
That first stint was not enough for the duo, they knew they had to return. “We felt that we hadn’t discovered Dharavi completely,” says Amanda. “We decided to come back and do something here. Over the past four years, we thought about what we could do, and that’s how the idea for the design museum came up. We have been here for two weeks now, working on the museum. It has been a whirlwind! But easier than we thought it would be.”
The residents of Dharavi are by now habituated to foreigners visiting the area, wanting to shoot photos etc. But with Jorge and Amanda, it was different, says Shyam Kale, who works with the urban research and action collective URBZ.
“Jorge and Amanda (approached me) and said they wanted to walk around the locality, step by step. And the further we moved, the more inquisitive they became. We went to different areas (to curate the museum’s collection). The designs Jorge and Amanda have curated will help the world see the kind of work our community does. Their ideas were so prolific and they always kept the Indian culture and identity in mind. Within 15 days, they had traversed even the minor lanes and smaller places within Dharavi,” Shyam says.
Amanda and Jorge were clear about wanting to go beyond mere curation to actually effecting social change through the design museum. So the objects that made their way into display were chosen with special care, such as the reed brooms. “We thought it would make a pretty big statement to have the broom in the museum. It’s a very strong symbol for us. At the same time it is also associated with the caste system. Broom makers are at the bottom of the pyramid and we wanted to put up everything on the same level,” Jorge says.
The concept of mounting their display on a handcart — of having a moveable museum — was carefully thought out. “The whole idea of having a cart in Dharavi is that it’s just not easy to get a place here. We wanted to be nomadic, travel from one community to the other,” Amanda explains.
After a week of being in Kumbharwada, Jorge and Amanda will take the museum to other areas in Dharavi. They also want to tap a lot more of the local talent over the time to come. Asserting that this isn’t a short-term project, but one that they will be carefully monitoring over a period of time, Amanda says, “For us, the museum is not a one-month project where we do something and forget about it. We will monitor things from Amsterdam and are doing a conference back in The Netherlands in May to see if the model that we have used here can be implemented in other informal set-ups — from Rio to Istanbul.”
