The Bather
Inkjet print – 86.6 x 128.3 inches
Concrete bath tub – 23 x 60 x 31.5 inches
2017

To swim in the murky waters of the Yamuna river, a teenager filled his bathing suit with bits of Styrofoam. Fragile body that tries not to sink in the middle of a natural environment threatened by gigantic concrete infrastructure. Styrofoam is the material usually used for packing goods. Here he protects a young body that indulges in the pleasure of swimming on the holy Yamuna river, expresses resistance to a global world that is dehumanized.

Double Augustin–Delhi
Inkjet print
73 x 59 inches
2017

“I met  Augustin during my wanderings on the banks of the river Yamuna in Delhi. Everyday, for over many decades, Augustin has undertaken to rummage the riverbed, not only to clean it  but also to find objects that he can sell. Augustin likes to say : "I am a social worker !". With the money recovered from the sale of these objects, he provides for his own needs but also helps the poorest people around him. We have met several times in recent years and I wanted to pay tribute to him by making a set of pieces, the fruits of our collaboration. I suggested filming him during a week, as he searched for objects at the bottom of the river and to sell me these objects, which I then used to make it a set of seven sculptures as seven days of collect. At the age of 8 Augustin was converted to Catholicism and today he is founding the objects of Hindu rituals from the Yamuna. I wanted to open a questioning around this passage by exposing the photography The Bridge. »
François Daireaux

The Bridge,Yamuna River- Delhi
Inkjet print
59 x 88.5 inches
2017

Augustin, Seven Days
Set of 7 sculptures
Black rubber, objects from the Yamuna River
2017

Augustin, Seven Days
Set of 7 sculptures
Black rubber, objects from the Yamuna River
2017

Suite
Color film
127’
(Work in progress)
2004-2017

‘Suite’ as the title suggests is a vast corpus of video work started by François Daireaux in the year 2004 and remains an ongoing one. The artist has captured and composed 176 sequences depicting gestures/actions of manual workers till date. These are endangered gestures that François Daireaux has constantly filmed and gleaned during his stay in Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, China, India, Morocco, Mexico, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. With every passing year, the video is reworked and readjusted as new gestures that have been recorded are added and further readapted according to the context of an exhibition. It is the artist’s preoccupation to keep recording gestures in a global context, making it a work continuously in progress.

Bhagwati

63’
Original Version : Hindi / Subtitles : English

We are in Firozabad in India in a family factory of glass tubes. The boss, Devki, founded "Bhagwati Glass Enterprise" in 1973. Today, he hasn’t been on the production lines for a long time, he remains confined to his office. In front of him, the door opens, closes, according to the visits of friends, shopkeepers, workers, lawyers... And always, he keeps his eye on the control screen, observing the images six surveillance cameras that continuously film the production spaces. These blurred and flickering images are his only contact with the harshness of the work of his workers who produce glass tubes day and night in phenomenal quantities.Traditional know-how and international trade collide. The registers of images intertwine, words arise, stories are developed. We worry about the future.

The Familiar is Always a Stranger
Duo Show with Ravi Agarwal, from 17th December, 2017 to 13th January, 2018
Gallery Espace
16 Community Centre
New Friends Colony
New Delhi - 110025
www.galleryespace.com