Rohit Raj Mehndiratta’s Solo Show, ‘Memorial to Socialist Modernity’, is inspired by the tearing down of ‘modern’ structures and urban fragments over the past decade. The exhibition looks at three particular spaces: the destruction of the government colony Sarojini Nagar (1955) in Delhi along with two of Mahendra Raj’s engineering feats – Hall of Nations, Delhi (1972) and Hindon River Mills, Ghaziabad (1973). Capturing demolition through photographic documentation and salvaged construction debris, the exhibition engages with a type of modernity produced by idiosyncratic brilliance and mass production generating dialogues on the notions of loss, on the visual spectacle of erasure, on the idea of collective and personal memory.
