Project tracks changing face of defunct mill district

MUMBAI: When artist Meera Devidayal happened to walk past the crumbling Shakti Mills structure three years ago, she was taken aback at how much it had changed. It had been over a decade since the mill had first made its way into her work, juxtaposed against images of swanky housing projects. "I had spent a lot of time photographing Shakti Mills back then, when it was much easier to get inside," she recalls. Now, the structure was unrecognizable and resembled a jungle. Struck by the metamorphosis, Devidayal picked up her camera again.

The snapshots and footage of the city's mill district, pieced together over three years, are part of the artist's latest project, 'A Terrible Beauty'. Slated to open at Fort's Chemould Prescott Road gallery from Tuesday April 29, the exhibition features mixed-media artworks, photographs and videos, each highlighting the changing role of mills in the city.

The videos are the project's centrepiece, taking audiences across the old-world mill district and modern-day Mumbai. Urban staples like escalators, fast-food outlets inside malls, and massive screens beaming a cricket match merge with shots of children playing cricket across a loomshed. Workers draw water from the baoris or wells inside, while an audience listens to a classical music concert on a mill's refashioned premises. A board outside a trendy cafe on the Todi Mills premises lists the day's specials.

"When they were first built, people expected the mills to be around for ever," Devidayal says. "They thought they'd be like permanent cathedrals in a sense, but today, they are gone. For me, that was the story." With the abandoned mill areas seen as largely unsafe today, particularly after the Shakti Mills gangrapes, Devidayal's work is a comment on both their place in history, and the recent evolution.

The fact that her father had owned a mill in Orissa lent a personal association to the project. "It wasn't on the same scale as say, India United, but was a household name there," she recalls. Set up in 1946, it was eventually taken over by the state government and shut down. Devidayal visited it recently, and while the mill hadn't inspired her project, it lent a boost to the idea, she says.

The works also point to the "life cycle" of other familiar structures in the city. "When they were built, the mills were an expression of a dream. The same can be said for the high-rises around us now," explains Devidayal. "What we think of as great and permanent now, who knows what kind of life cycle those structures will have?"

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