New perspective on billboards showcased at art exhibition

Dhi Artspace, in collaboration with Goethe-Zentrum, Hyderabad, is organising an art exhibition, ‘The Indian Billboard Society,’ created exclusively for Hyderabad by Jan Ratschat and curated by Anja Ellenberger at Dhi Artspace. Five billboards were set up in the exhibition in the middle of the gallery in the form of a pentagon. 

Although it was the first time for the artist to come to India, he created the works by viewing YouTube videos of Hyderabad streets donned with galore of billboards. Anja Ellenberger, an artist and a film historian, who curated the show said, “The site-specific installation, created by the German artist, Jan Ratschat, challenges our perception of billboards and the way we deal with the content. Normal billboards promote messages, usually advertisements, facing onlookers. However, here at the exhibition, the billboards circumscribe a pentagon, facing one another and surrounding us.”

“Visitors enter the pentagon of billboards like they would enter their private rooms. What many experience, consciously or unconsciously, at first is the uneasiness of the place, but the feeling soon vanishes, as they come to see the objects from a totally different context. As part of installation, the billboards impose themselves upon us, orbiting the private and public spheres,” she added.

“While researching on the internet, Ratschat came across a blossoming India and its harsh realities. The visuals he found showed a country of colours and patterns of huge billboards on the sides of the streets, which seem to build a specific landmark in Indian mega-cities like Hyderabad, and which constantly send messages of commercial interests. On the other hand, here at the art exhibition, they promote irritating messages in golden letters on colourfully patterned fabrics from Hyderabad’s cloth bazaars, thus responding to the impressions Ratschat had viewed in his research and reflecting on the inconsistencies of information that hit a Western eye, when confronted with a new and foreign culture,” she further added.