Disappearing Professions of Urban India is Clare Arni’s first solo show in Mumbai featuring digital photographs taken over the last six years across seven major Indian cities, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata. The intention of the works is to explore the historical patterns of vanishing professions, their attempts to adapt to survive. Many of the skilled artisans documented are struggling, most said their children were not going to follow them into the profession and some have since ceased to be employed.
The selection of photographs at TARQ looks into the vibrant variety of people, textures and colours that we will be losing out on as these professions cease to operate. Clare is able to capture unique vistas of the cities she explores, looking not only at crafts that will be lost to us, but also sights, and places that are rapidly evolving into a colder, unfamiliar space.
The body of work is accompanied by narratives written by Oriole Henry, who, with the artist researched the professions traditionally associated with the city or state in question. In documenting both the show as well as the vanishing professions of a nation, TARQ is proud to publish, in collaboration with Spenta Multimedia, a catalogue of select works from the show, as well as their stories.