One For the Road

Himalayan roadways. Riding from August to

October this year,Joag began his journey in Maharashtra and ended it in Shanghai this week, enduring many travails that included losing the spokes on his wheels,having a few near death experiences and being denied entry into Tibet.

Joag’s reason behind the project is anchored in his social activism. “My journey was a pilgrimage to the Nehruvian socialist idea of dams being the ‘temples’ of a resurgent India. I wanted to interact with people and gauge their understanding of the concept,or even,at a basic level,of the importance of these dams in their lives. I began at the Sardar Sarovar project and wanted to end it at the Three Gorges Dam in China,” says Joag,44,who then decided to extend the journey further to Shanghai.

But how does riding a motorcycle qualify as a work of art? Joag says the idea behind the journey was to challenge notions of a performance artist. “I think it is necessary to ‘derail’ yourself when you find you are getting too comfortable in life. That gives you a new insight and vigour. This trip has references to the journey that Siddharth (Gautam Buddha) had taken,the journey that Chinese traveller Fa Hien undertook and Ernesto Che Guevara’s ride round Latin America — all of them were life-changing journeys,” says Joag,who maintained a blog throughout the three-month trip. Once in India,the artist intends to mount an exhibition of the photographs taken during the trip and an installation made with the parts of the motorcycle — called Rocinante — which he rode through the trip.

His journey,he says,also opened him up to different social realities. “The reception I got varied from place to place. Most people were sceptical,cynical even,about my purpose. Then there were others who welcomed me with open arms,” says the artist,who had studied at the JJ School of Art,Mumbai,in 1988,and went on to do his masters at the MS University in Baroda,where he trained to be a sculptor. In 2000,during a residency at the Rijksakademi in Amsterdam,he broadened his repertoire to become a performance artist.