Junked prints and moldy videos

July 2009 -

SUSPECT is an evolving, international group of poets, photographers, filmmakers and anthropologists who want to uncover the subtle beauty in the most everyday objects as displayed in everyday spaces. In a rundown and abandoned office building, behind the Kala Ghoda Café in Mumbai, the arts collective debuted their first exhibit, entitled Mint Condition.

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Objects from Mint Condition

According to SUSPECT, the meaningfulness of these ordinary objects lay in the dignity they deserve and the mystery they exude. The exhibit seeks to question the value of art objects and mock the artificial interest in Indian art more specifically. According to SUSPECT member Farhad Bomanjee, the latter is losing its inventive, but fading, culture of recycling and reusing waste.

"Finding beauty is simply a matter of shifting perspectives or broadening one's vision", Bomanjee explains. "It's important to celebrate…so we don't just get stuck in the rut of only looking when something is hung on the white walls of a gallery of a museum…”

SUSPECT also reflects on art as a subjective experience that is open to interpretation. By placing old objects in new settings, the exhibit challenges traditional ideas of ownership and reveals how past histories can be transformed into new stories.

In its truest sense, SUSPECT is a collective effort dedicated to dispel the myth of the singular and original artist. "No creative individual works in isolation", admits Bomanjee. “The best and most creative steal and stand on the shoulders of giants. It just so happens that our giants are strangers…"