“Haal Mukaam: Current Address”, a solo show by Girjesh Kumar Singh, on view at the India Art Fair 2026, profoundly asks questions about home, identity, and what home is. The artist uses bricks and mortar from demolished houses to make these artworks, recasting them into rhetorics of loss, memory, and changed landscapes. Singh’s practice is striking in its simplicity: he collects broken bricks and brick walls from demolished buildings and carves them into art.
At first glance, these are people, figures and objects carved from bricks. And that is indeed true. But in depth, we need to know, by sculpting these on bricks from demolished or abandoned buildings, the artist says something else. Anyone can see that these works are set in a highly formidable Indian socio-political environment.
In short, materials, brick-and-mortar, from demolished buildings are remarkable and raise questions about the political contexts that inform this artwork.
The artist finds his material, bricks, not only in demolished structures in his hometown but also in those around him, called ‘found materials’. ‘Found materials’ usually represent the continuity of what is abandoned or lost, connecting a strange/r object to an artwork and making it more ambiguous. But here, in ‘Haal Mukaam: Current Address,’ moving from found material to ‘demolished constructions,’ we see that ‘art is expressing its politics’, even against the artist’s will.
Structure is not an end
The sculptures appear in a variety of situations, including resting, leaning on, sitting on, between, or inside bricks, and men and women clinging to, caressing, or leaning on their bags, backpacks, bundles, and possessions. Every piece of art conveys the confusion of being uprooted, engraved with a sense of loss that accompanies abrupt, dangerous travels. As physical manifestations of persons in transit, the luggage seems to be almost merged with, or symbolise the bodies of the people carrying or losing them. They contain not only personal items but also dread, hesitation, and the burden of arrival at a hopeless harbour.
We can easily see that the meaning of these works is home/lessness and belonging. If done well, then we can see it is a tense, subtle critique of the worried times we live in. Those works, with their wounded appearances, are highly refined and beautiful, and the very spirit of these works tells us a political story.
“Structure is not the end of the world,” said Deleuze. But sometimes it can be the beginning of many things. In today’s political climate, having a structure to be dismantled is desirable. The political significance of demolished buildings and their remains in India is vast, and the damage they cause is unpredictable. Through demolition, the matter of ‘protection’ is delivered, and yet it politicises the ‘demolition.’ Through these artworks, people are returning to those striking political objects—the demolished remains—standing, leaning and sitting, and representing various states of stillness.
The locations of the materials and demolished artefacts used in these artworks reveal their significance. As one should understand their political surroundings, these works of art are both critical and satirical, questioning contemporaneity while also exposing its follies. This content can be seen as a relic in a multi-layered material journey, even if politics are put away. Eventually, the bricks that once stood for human life, celebration of its pleasures, existence, survival, and privileges are violently demolished, as a ‘bulldozer raj’ rules us. They abandoned and arrived at an artist’s studio, and from there, in a transformed form, as an artwork, the ensuing tangible journey begins.
News of buildings collapsing is not particularly shocking, given the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel’s aggressiveness in Palestine. However, we, Indians, do not have to travel far to see demolished buildings or hear about them. There have been several incidents in our country, and the artist Girjesh obtained building ruins from it.
However, one can see that the figures of sadhus wearing rudraksha garlands in the ruins of demolished buildings reflect the contemporary Indian psyche. Above the destruction, poor sdhus’ tranquillity stands firmly. Closely, it’s irony, but in India, it’s nothing. No matter how innocent the answer to the question about the sadhu’s face is, it will never be completely innocent.
The moment a sculptor claims authorship of sculptures created on parts of a demolished house or wall, specific questions arise. Why doesn’t the artist explain that my attempt, through sculptures made from parts of demolished houses, is to restore living space to those who have lost it? Perhaps he does not point out the term ‘demolished constructions,’ but shouldn’t the artist at least dare to say that providing houses and living space, even artistically, to those who have lost them through demolition is an artist’s responsibility that the times demand? The term ‘demolished constructions’ is limited only to the content shared by the gallery. Its material history is being simplified by the artist merely to homelessness, displacement, and the like. The artist’s hindrance, who cannot simply blend, or fear to, the history carried by the materials used to create these artworks, or who does not address the materials’ power to represent themselves, is evident here.
History is not something that can be taken for granted or twisted however one wants; it also includes the history embedded in things, that is, material history. As we know, history does not stand apart; it is embodied. The history of demolished buildings cannot be removed from the ruins of those buildings. Material history, as embodied trait and memory, is made and remade through the act of construction, reconstruction and demolition. Material culture is not just the history of what has been created; rather, it encompasses all its transitions from construction to demolition, and so on.
While the themes of migration and identity, expressed through his artistic creations, are certainly worth discussing, the question remains: why would an artist conceal even more intense subjects? Anyway, it fulfils its political function, both rhetorically and manifestly, in a way that can be read, rediscovered, and seen, regardless of how much it is hidden.
It is not the artist’s responsibility to solve problems. However, there should be an understanding that it is undesirable to remove things from matters, meaning and its embodied history.
Even if the exoduses of the material are related to the history of their own exoduses, some things, no matter how much they are set aside, will not be enough. In other words, histories that go beyond exoduse history cannot be merely collected and recounted. Some things, like the history of materials, cannot be adequately explained simply by linking the demolition of materials to the artist’s personal exiles. In other words, it is impossible to hide histories that go beyond the history of exiles.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
