Subodh: I’ll give you an example. In 1997, I made a big installation called ‘My Mother and Me’ made of cow dung cakes that are used on the walls of huts across rural India. I burnt the cow dung cakes and made ash, like a powder, and sprayed it on the insides of the installation. When the Japanese Fukuoka Museum saw the piece, they invited me to the 1999 Fukuoka Triennial and asked me to come for a month-long residency. For one whole month, we had a correspondence on how to get the cow dung cake from India to Japan, because the Japanese government would not allow any organic material to enter the country! But here, my cow dung cake piece got no attention. After 10 years, a friend of mine bought it and put it in his living room.

Bharti: We are not trying to educate people about art. There are so many international artists who come to Delhi but they’re never invited to speak anywhere. Subodh has never been invited to the Delhi College of Art to give a lecture on his work. I went once in 1993—the hall was packed, the students were excited. We go to Europe, UK and people invite us to give a tutorial. But not here.

•C. Jayanthi: Do a painter and a sculptor share the same kind of creativity? Why do you choose to be sculptor when it’s far easier to be a painter?

Subodh: We do both. Contemporary art is attached to everything. Installation art includes painting, sculpture, sound. Movies, documentaries, video art have become one. Now art as a whole has a wider canvas than ever before.

... contd.