Games People Play 02: Thukral & Tagra mark 20 years in Indian art with show featuring modified table tennis, multitasking game

As with the first iteration, the central idea of 'Games People Play 02' is to animate a space that is typically seen as serious or sombre, and prime it for participation and play. (Image credit: Moneycontrol)

If getting a head massage at an art exhibition or jumping on a trampoline inside a major cultural institution in Lutyens’ Delhi sounds like something you might like to try once — and perhaps use as a party anecdote for life — then the place to do this now is the Lalit Kala Akademi, where Sumir Tagra and Jiten Thukral are celebrating 20 years of their art practice with a show titled ‘Games People Play 02’, from October 7 – 16.

‘Games People Play 02’ comprises 10 works, selected to evoke 10 emotions: hope, vulnerability, anxiety, belief, speculation, reverie, conjecture, adaptivity, resilience and care. Most works on display here are not new, but some have been recontextualised for this show. At the show preview on October 6, Sumir Tagra explained that nothing the artists make or use in their work is wasted. “It can all be packed up,” he said - implying also that it can all be revised, recalibrated, reimagined, recontextualised for a new iteration, a new exhibition or a new series.

Tagra cites the examples of ‘Lullament’, and ‘The Capsule'. ‘Lullament’ (pictured below) has previously been shown with the lanes in a circle — like running-tracks for athletes — instead of straight lines as in a bowling alley. And a version of ‘The Capsule’ — where visitors must attempt two activities at once, like jumping on a trampoline while reading the newspaper, or weightlifting while reciting poetry, or reading out your CV as you exercise on a stationary cycle — was also part of the first ‘Games People Play’ show by Thukral and Tagra at the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum in  May – June 2015.

There are other older works here as well: ‘Bubble Under the Table’ was made in 2010 for a show in South Korea’s Arario Gallery. ‘Nafrat – Parvah’ — an “art work” that invites visitors to pack something they hate in brown paper and string, label it and exchange it for a service of care like a haircut or hair styling or a head massage — is in its third iteration. Though the decision to include older works seems to have been logistical, it offers, perhaps unintendedly, a look back at some of the themes, ideas and materials that the artists have wrestled with over the last 20 years.

'Lullaments'. (Image courtesy Thukral and Tagra)

Games and emotions

‘Games People Play 02’ is the second iteration of Thukral and Tagra’s ‘Games People Play’ exhibition which opened in Mumbai’s Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in May 2015. Back then, the artists had been invited to respond to the museum collection, and they had picked traditional games like Ganjifa cards.

As with the first iteration of the show, the central idea in this exhibition too is to animate a space that is typically seen as serious or sombre, and prime it for participation and play. This is cued as soon as you enter the exhibition space, with two modified TT tables where you can play a different version of table tennis. In ‘Assets and Liabilities’, the TT table is shaped like a paper plane and as you play, the ball gets deflected and diverted over its tail in unexpected ways. The motif on the surface of the table draws upon the old Rs 500 note that was in use before the November 2016 demonetization drive. The second game of “table tennis” is called ‘Trust and Betrayal’, a single-player game where you play against yourself and yet are not always able to control your opponent.

In the brochure accompanying 'Games People Play 02', Thukral and Tagra explain that they are interested in the different aspects of play: cultural, strategic, philosophical.

'Assets and Liabilities' by Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra (in red). The table surface design is inspired by the old Rs 500 note that is no longer legal tender. The table itself is shaped like a paper plane, to indicate how some wealth vanished post-demonetization in 2016. (Image credit: Moneycontrol)

Though the artists have resisted linking specific exhibition days of ‘Games People Play 02’ to particular emotions, they have broadly cued some emotions to be drawn from the pieces. This, however, is more a suggestion than edict.

So, a work like ‘Swantantur Singh B’ could evoke vulnerability or belief, anxiety or adaptivity, depending on how you look at it. The work is inspired from a true story — Thukral’s uncle, Swatantur Singh, went abroad for the first time at the age of 77. But before he could realise his decades-long dream to go overseas, he had to pass through airport security, where he froze briefly as the security scanners and personnel did their jobs. (There’s an actual layer of ice-frost on the aluminium sculpture of Swatantur Singh, maintained using a fridge compressor which is cleverly incorporated in the work.)

'Swatantur Singh B'.

Looking at ‘Swatantur Singh B’, you might think he was anxious during the security check and therefore froze — after jumping through all kinds of hoops to get a visa and tickets, no one wants to be sent back from the immigration desk. An alternative reading could be that living in modern India, where we routinely go through security checks wherever we go — from malls to movie halls and metro stations, he was immune to them and just feeling cold because the air-conditioner was blasting at the airport. You could stand in front of the work, and think of a half-dozen scenarios to explain the posture and the frost, projecting your feelings and experiences of travelling by air onto the sculpture.

Dominus Aeris Flux VII- 2025. The artists have depicted hot air balloons in their work in the past, to signal the hopes and desires linked with emigration in India. (Image courtesy Thukral and Tagra)

Emotion is at the centre of each of the 10 works. This works at two levels: One, the emotions that the artists themselves had to work through to make the works. And two, the emotions that visitors bring to the show on the day they visit.

Indeed, you could view some of the works in different ways on different days, depending on your mood. Take ‘Lullament’, for instance. A portmanteau of lullaby and lament, ‘Lullament’ looks like seven long lanes with dozens of orange ping-pong balls in each of them. There are fans at both ends. As the fans come on, the balls rush from one end of the lanes to another — going back and forth, back and forth.

Standing in front of the work on a day when you are feeling anxious, you could interpret ‘Lullament’ as representing a passage from birth to death with a relentless rat race in-between. On a day when you’re feeling more relaxed, even whimsical, you might be arrested by the back-and-forth movement of hundreds of fluorescent ping-pong balls bouncing forward hypnotically in their lanes. There are multiple possible readings here, as with many of T&T's works. In the past when the artists have shown ‘Lullament’, they have offered a philosophical-mythological explanation for what it means. In this reading, the ping-pong balls are posited as unsettled humans, the game as an entire lifespan and the forces at each end are ascribed negative and positive values.

Jiten Thukral in front of 'Monuments of Time', made with over 1,000 ping pong balls and objects and furniture from the artists' Gurgaon studio. (Image: Moneycontrol)

In terms of formats, there are dance performances and kinetic sculptures here but also more conventional games and paintings. Case in point: Weeping Farm is a board game, complete with cards and game-money. There are also framed artworks and sculptures that hark back to some themes that Thukral and Tagra have explored before — like the desire to move abroad, which is captured in ‘Bubble Under the Table’. Farmers get a nod in the educative ‘Weeping Farm’ which is about farm debt and women who work as cultivators and farm labourers. As material, Thukral and Tagra use ping pong balls in two works here: ‘Lullament’, of course. But also ‘Monuments of Time’ where the ping pong balls are stuck together to make a lattice incorporating and balancing furniture and objects from the artists' studio as a nod to their creative practice and the passage of time.

'Nafrat - Parvah' at 'Games People Play 02', at Lalit Kala Akademi. (Image credit: Moneycontrol)

“‘The Capsule’ is about how we live our lives today,” Tagra said. How we play time like an accordion. Shrinking it down by outsourcing some jobs like delivering our groceries and shopping to others on the one hand, and then trying to stretch it out by stuffing the time we have on our hands with multiple activities — presumably to get more done in the same amount of time. “How often do you Blinkit something?,” asked Tagra. “I listen to podcasts when I exercise. I know a lot of people get the day’s news while they are on the treadmill,” he added.

If the absurdity of trying to stuff so much more activity into every hour, every day, is not apparent in real life, it becomes clearer in ‘The Capsule’. Of those who try the activities here for a maximum of 5 minutes, an equal number leave in splits or annoyed at their frustrated efforts.

Games People Play 02 is on till October 16, at Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi, from 11 am - 7 pm.