IF YOU DROVE DOWN THE LEAFY LODHI ROAD, just south of central Delhi, on a February or March evening this year and were attentive to your surroundings, you might have been rewarded with an unusual sight. Nestled in the row of bungalows facing the road was an abandoned double-storey house from whose front wall narrow strips of cement had been chiseled off to fashion straight and curved lines running across it in no particular pattern, and occasionally crossing each other. Some of these hollowed-out lines had red LED string lights embedded in them, making them glow softly.
Aptly, the three-member team who created the work—Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Jeebesh Bagchi, who call themselves the Raqs Media Collective (or Raqs, for short)—identify themselves as Dilliwallahs, rooted in the city of their births, the place from where they gaze out into the world. “This is our axis; this is our location,” as Sengupta said to me.
