The ‘Metro ’Art in Delhi – Paramjot walia & Priyanka Tagore
The population of Delhi has been estimated at 1.67 crore and approximately six
million vehicles, with 1,200 more added daily.
With auto rickshaws on the roads out to fleece commuters and traffic congestion
eating away your time, the Delhi Metro service comes as a relief from the everyday jostle
for transport. According to a report by the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), as
many as 1.2 lakh vehicles are off the road every day due to the Metro.
The Metro service is more than just a means of transport, under the direction of the
‘Metro Man’, E. Sreedharan, the rail is a happy paradigm of integrity, punctuality and
professional competence. It is a breathing vestige of another India, one where inequality
and racial prejudice doesn’t exist, an India where people with myriad differences share
the same space.
With an average of 2.01 million people riding the Delhi Metro per day, displaying
art at the stations was undoubtedly the best way to bring art closer to the public. Delhi,
being the capital of the country, has the happy task of introducing tourists to our art andfrom a TBM and soil samples collected from around the city used at construction
sites form a part of the Museum.
Artworks at a few stations are like instances in history where stories form the
substance of the work. Exquisite wall panels created by the students of Delhi College
Of Arts, under the guidance of the then principal, Prof. M. Vijaymohan, adorn the
walls of Shahdra station. The fibre glass relief work depicts a village scene alongside
a jungle – beautiful trees, a mother with her child, a bullfight, a mud house and
a woman offering food to a king sitting on a horse. These rhythmic impulses of
sculptural figurations show men in harmony with the nature and the wild, and the
tradition to honour the hierarchy. The spell of the ancient times and the essence of
the historical monuments act as the stimuli behind the tiled murals which depict
the processions during the Mughal era.
Art forms at the stations act as a relief and add a little colour to otherwise
mundane journeys. Karol Bagh has tiled murals of landscapes, peacocks and floral
prints and an interesting wall painting with many colours flowing together. This
deliberate simplification, not in the least categorized as abstract, successfully
captures and depicts the mix of emotions and moods scattered all over the metro
station.
An interesting work at the Central Secretariat station titled ‘Illusions’ consists
of prints of two photographs taken by Vibhor Taneja in Ladakh, one of the snowy
peaks and another of a long winding road. These works stand against the narcissistic
reality, pulling you to the edges of a world defined by peace, away from the frenzied
commotion.
Seelampur Metro station is quite a delight. There are tiled murals on almost every
wall and pillar, showing the Qutub Minar, Red Fort, India Gate and Jantar Mantar,
with characters from Indian epics floating in the sky on a chariot. Observing the
adoption of many ancient symbolisms into the scheme of pictorial language, there