Tushar Joag
Tushar Joag explores art in the public sphere. As an interventionist and inventor of mock corporate identities, he takes a satirical look at the urban classes and suggests that art is responsible for maintaining cultural continuity. This rhetoric leads him to conceive of unicell, a corporate body of one, that mimics many of the absurdities of government bureaucracy in a continent reliant upon social and political solutions. The Enlightening Army of the Empire 2008 is an installation comprising sixteen robot style figures that are animated by electric bulbs and stop lights. This Disney styled army of dishevelled robots appear to stand to attention holding florescent tube lights as possible weapons against human kind. Each individual robot is crafted with a subtly styled, quirky personality. Each of Joag’s steel figures stands loosely to attention, as their individual light configurations illuminate their location and tangled wires join their feet collectively.