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Thursday 6 February

Jitish Kallat: The Tightrope Walker of Time and Space

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: the first time I discovered the work of Jitish Kallat (born in 1974 in Mumbai), I nearly choked on my butter croissant in a Parisian café. Not because his art is hard to swallow—quite the opposite. It’s just that some artists have the power to jolt your neurons at breakfast, making you spit out your intellectual comfort like bad coffee. Kallat is one of those.

Let’s start with his way of manhandling time, twisting it like a worn-out rag until it reveals its most intimate secrets. In his “Public Notice” series, he doesn’t hesitate to summon the ghosts of Gandhi and Nehru—not for a cheap séance act, but to rub our noses in our own contemporary hypocrisy. Take “Public Notice 2” (2007): 4,479 fiberglass bones forming the words of Gandhi’s speech on non-violence. A conceptual masterstroke that would have brought tears of joy to Walter Benjamin. The aura of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction? Kallat reinvents it, transforming a historical speech into a contemporary relic. He doesn’t recycle history; he resurrects it, making it sway between past and present like a drunken tightrope walker.

But that’s not all. Look at how he treats Mumbai, his hometown. Not as an exotic postcard for spirituality-seeking tourists, but as a living, pulsating organism, devouring and transforming itself. In his works, the Indian megacity becomes a Kafkaesque monster, a creature constantly metamorphosing between frenetic urbanity and dizzying cosmos. His photographic series captures this tension with surgical precision. The bustling streets turn into urban constellations, every street vendor a star in their own galaxy of daily survival.

And let’s talk about his obsession with the cosmic! Kallat juggles the infinitely large and the infinitely small with the ease of a quantum physicist on acid. In “Epilogue” (2010-2011), he transforms 22,889 moons into rotis, those Indian flatbreads. A work that would have made Hegel smile: the dialectic of the everyday and the eternal, served on a conceptual silver platter. But don’t expect any New Age mysticism here. Kallat remains grounded in reality, even when he takes us to the stars.

Kallat’s strength lies in never settling for merely being “contemporary”. He digs deeper, like an archaeologist of the present uncovering that every moment is, in fact, a superimposition of thousands of others. His monumental installations aren’t there to impress retired collectors but to confront us with our fragmented temporality. It’s Jacques Derrida in three dimensions—a deconstruction that doesn’t hide behind pompous academic jargon.

And let’s not even get started on his technical mastery. When Kallat uses video, photography, or sculpture, it’s not to look pretty in a sales catalog. Each medium is chosen with the precision of a philosophical sniper. Take “Wind Study” (2017): drawings created with fire and shaped by the wind. A performance that turns natural elements into artistic collaborators. Even Yves Klein, with his anthropometries, didn’t push the envelope that far.

But what I love most about Kallat is that he transforms the banal into the extraordinary without ever falling into gratuitous spectacle. His works are like Zen koans that explode in your face when you least expect it. In “Forensic Trail of the Grand Banquet” (2009), simple X-rays of food become galactic cartographies. It’s Friedrich Nietzsche meeting Carl Sagan in a Mumbai kitchen.

While some contemporary artists exhaust themselves chasing trends like teenagers after their latest Instagram crush, Kallat patiently constructs a body of work that transcends fashions. He doesn’t seek to please; he seeks to make sense. In a contemporary art world often more concerned with sales figures than substance, that’s almost revolutionary.

His approach to social and political issues is equally subtle and impactful. No need for banners or loud slogans—Kallat makes us think through sophisticated visual metaphors. “Anger at the Speed of Fright” (2010), with its microscopic figurines of protesters frozen in violence, is a chilling meditation on our era of perpetual conflict. It’s Hannah Arendt meeting Hieronymus Bosch in a street protest.

And don’t get me started on his “Chlorophyll Park” series, where he replaces asphalt with wheatgrass. It’s not a simple ecological statement to please urbanites yearning for greenery. It’s a profound reflection on our relationship with nature, urbanization, and survival itself. Theodor Adorno would have applauded this subtle critique of our “administered world”.

What’s fascinating is that Kallat manages to be deeply Indian without ever descending into cheap exoticism. He uses his cultural context as a springboard to the universal, not as a postcard for authenticity-seeking tourists. His references to Indian philosophical traditions are never gratuitous; they always serve a broader, more ambitious purpose.

Superficial critics might say his work is too intellectual, too conceptual. But that’s precisely its strength: Kallat doesn’t give us easy answers; he demands total engagement, active reflection. He doesn’t serve art on a silver platter with a plastic spoon. No, he forces us to chew, digest, and metabolize his works.

In a contemporary art world often dominated by empty spectacle and hollow conceptualism, Kallat is a necessary antidote. He reminds us that art can still be intellectually stimulating and visually powerful, politically engaged and poetically subtle. His work is living proof that complexity is not the enemy of accessibility, and that depth doesn’t exclude clarity.

So yes, some will continue to prefer easy art, the kind that doesn’t disturb certainties or shake up routines. But for those who still seek in contemporary art that spark that makes the mind vibrate and convictions tremble, Kallat is an indispensable artist. He is one of those who prove that contemporary art is not dead—that it can still speak to us, move us, and transform us.

Kallat’s work is like a complex mirror held up to our times. A mirror that doesn’t just reflect but distorts, transforms, and reveals. In this mirror, we see not only who we are but also who we could be. And isn’t that the highest ambition of art?

And if you don’t agree with me, well, go back to your plastified Van Gogh posters. I’d rather lose myself in Kallat’s urban constellations and conceptual galaxies. At least there, I learn something about our world, our time, and ourselves.

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