Subterranean inversion: Structures of Forgetting
2025
Mayla Bagh Jhalra, Jodhpur, Rajasthan
32x35x38 feet (center) and 20x10x27 feet (left)
Created with local metal specialists Anshul, Mayank and Kuldeep Kularia, this site-specific artwork was exhibited at Jodhpur Arts Week, supported by the Public Arts Trust of India (PATI) and RMZ Foundation.
The stepwell, by its very descent, embodies a kind of inversion: an architecture that turns monumentality underground, away from the eye, under the horizon.
Within the work are the forms of thirteen stepwells across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Each one commissioned by women, their architectural forms reimagined across nine sculptures that distort/fragment/glitch/reflect/stretch and visually skew the surrounding architecture into itself. Some of the referenced stepwells are monumentalised in archives; others survive only as ruins, their matronage known through oral histories, folklore or folk music.
In Jodhpur, Gulab Rai commissioned this Jhalra in 1780. As a young child Gulab Rai was sold as a slave, and later enters the royal court as a Kha vas someone who lives and eats there. She rose through society by establishing a place in the royal courts, first as a Pardayat and later as a Paswan- a confidant to the king. Her ascent, however, did not sit well with the palace elite, and she was resented for upending traditional hierarchies and social norms. A woman of leadership, philanthropy, and intent- today her forgetting can be seen for its structural intention as she was someone who, despite opposition, acted beyond the limits of her position- including daring to be written in public memory via the commissioning of architecture.
Installed within the Mayla Bagh Jhalra in Jodhpur(a stepwell most locals still don’t know exists inside their walled city,) the work oscillates between visibility + invisibility, echoing the instability of memory and patriarchal histographies to perception and light. The work becomes both an extension and interruption of your experience of its repetitive geometry.
Over centuries, the Jhalra became an open-air dump, periodically revived through acts of care: first in 2015 by an Irish traveller, Caron Rawnsley, and later by the Scwedia Foundation since last year. What once held water now holds memory- layered, fractured, reflective. Subterranean architectures mirror subterranean histories — both buried, both essential, both requiring retrieval.
The work includes architectural forms of Panna Meena ka Kund(Amer, Jaipur), Rani Ki Vav (Patan, Gujarat), Ambapur Stepwell (Ambapur, Gujarat) Baramotichi Vihir stepwell (Limb, Satara), and of course Mayla Bagh Jhalra (Jodhpur, Rajasthan) to name a few. While most public spaces are occupied by male bodies in india, this was that one space that was occupied by mostly women. So when women commission stepwells it makes for a very particular action. Bringing 13 of the women together in the space, created a very particular energy into the space- powerful, concentrated, gentle and silent.
Programming:
We concluded Jodhpur Arts Week with a powerful performance of Terah Taali by Durga and her family, bringing music and dance that echo Rajasthan’s spirit of resilience, devotion, and celebration.
Singing about water and stories related to it, Terah Tali involves women sitting on the ground and using 13 cymbals, or manjeeras, tied to their bodies to create rhythmic beats.
This work would not have been possible without the people who brought this together: Aarin Husain, Abhiviraj Dev Singh, Ankit Bishnoi, Anshul Kularia, Anu Menda, Aprajita Sharma, Ashok Yadav, Bamby Singh, Dasrathi Muralidharan, Dudnath Yadav, Emma Sumner, Eshana Sharma, Harsheet Thukral, Hemant Jain, Jasraj Joshi, Kamna Anand, Kapil Ohja, Kritin Khandelwal, Kuldeep Kothari, Kuldeep Kularia, Lalu Yadav, Mayank Kularia, Mimansha Charan, Noor Singh, Parmatma Yadav, Pramod Yadav, Roshan Kumar, Sakhshi Mahajan, Sana Rezwan , Sanath Kumar, Sanjana Jain, Satya Singh Bhati, Sauryansh Singh, Sayan Sanyal, Satinder Singh, Shankar Singh, Sonu Pandit, Sujay Suryanarayanan, Surender Yadav, Swesha Sangwan, Urvashi Jhangiani, Vaibhav Chouhan, Vibhuti Jain and Vishnu Sharma.