Gifting
Photographs of textile structures and bundles printed on waterproof ripstop textile
I came to the Kumbh Mela in 2019 to mount an exhibition of photographs I had taken twelve years earlier—images of the tent city rising and dissolving along the Ganges and Yamuna riverbanks in Prayagraj, India, attracting millions of Hindu pilgrims. Images of fabric tents were printed on billboard-sized sheets of plastic, meant to hang in a temporary space near the festival grounds.
But once the exhibition was installed, the contradiction became impossible to ignore. I had arrived as an artist, yet I stood on a site sacred to millions, a place shaped by pilgrimage, devotion, and the elemental realities of river, cold, dust, and faith. The images, in that context, felt wrong—out of place, out of scale with the humility of the moment.
As I walked the Confluence of the rivers where pilgrims camped, meeting pilgrims in the January cold, many wrapped in thin cloth, sleeping on the bare ground, the purpose of the work shifted. My photographs were no longer artworks to be viewed; they were material—warmth, shelter, surface.
So I took the exhibition down. I rolled up the plastic prints and began gifting them, one by one, to people who could use them against the rain and night air. I had also designed simple car cover structures; I gave them away, too. When nothing remained—when everything had left my hands—I left the site.
What began as an exhibition became an act of release.
