Sakal Times, Tuesday February 17, 2015
An urban planner and architect by profession Paris-based Laurent Pinon is all set to find out the story of Pune through what he terms "the human topography" at the Refracting Rooms workshop.
Laurent's art is something that we have never seen before. He calls it Chrysalides (Pupae) that is made using raw silk cloth and starch and human bodies that provide it the desired shape. The Chrysalides became his weapon of self-expression when he was just 17. "I was in high school and that year we had experienced a lot of violence in school. I created my first Chrysalides as my graduation project. I wanted to show my teachers what all that violence meant to me. So I took a piece of cloth and threw it over my body. It looked like I was trapped beneath all that violence and unable to express myself," he informs.
From 1999 to 2009, Laurent was unable to find the artist within himself and looked for a way to convey his thoughts. Once again he sought the Chrysalides to say what he wanted to and created several artworks which he has exhibited in Paris. It's safe to say that this pupa has come out of his cocoon.
And that's what he plans to do in Pune. "I'm going to use the people of Pune to create the mould of their body and make a human topography that describes this city. For me, the city is like thousands of layers of lives that live in it. In geography, you talk about the layers of rocks that explains so many things to us, the same way layers of human topography will explain the city to us," he hopes.