Curated by Clark House Innitiative

Mobile x Stable

Many atoms come to occupy space creating physical matter, the Danish Nobel Physicist Niel Bohr sought a design that would explain the stability of atoms and molecules and their relationship to space.  Their kinetic movement sought a certain pause and even momentary gathering together to become an object.  

Aviation networks that find their hub in Dubai almost act as rings of atoms, like orbits in which we inhabit as humans.  But these networks gather people in cities where they seek stability through travel. Across Africa and South Asia people have been migrating to these hubs around the Gulf, escaping stagnant economies and inequalities that aren’t eased with growth.  Bombay is a financial hub that creates opportunities but not space, forcing young couples to migrate to find dwellings. Majority of the white collar immigrants in the Gulf seeking jobs are leaving cramped homes and dusty streets from cities in Africa and India. They seek a certain stability through the act of travel, buzzing away, from concerns that are not political but caused by unfortunate politics.  Tunisians, Syrians, Shias from Karachi, grandsons of Communist leaders from Kerala come and work for jobs along side Ukrainians, young Britishers from small towns in the United Kingdom and unemployed Italians.  Dubai offers an uncertain Utopia of livelihood, its architecture manifests in these Utopias.  Under tall aluminium towers lie restaurants that promise ' Moules Frites' in wooden panelled Brasseries, or restaurants where artists from Bombay create murals to create an ethnic experience, while far in Al Qouz, the local Afghani community has converted warehouses into floor seating kebab caverns that resemble Mughal sarais.  These are the utopias of a city where culture is fragmented with the memories its immigrants bring. A large population of single men away from their families sculpt these architectural scapes that compensate for the lack of colonial or folk remnants. They take on scales that are made to dwarf that convey a persons relativity to this utopia. The relativity of their passports to passports of European visa regimes and social security systems that they are kept out off.  

Jain, travels a show from Bombay to Dubai, a book of many chapters unfolds on the walls of a gallery that names it self from a calculation that does not aggregate. But immigration similarly is not an aggregation but  a relative escape for livelihood and romance, elements that dictate ideas of stability. 'Floating City' a sculpture of many earbuds engages those many lives that buzz as atoms in a city that offers a promise.  

- Sumesh Sharma & Chirag Mehta, Amsterdam 2014