BED AND BREAKFAST

2017

Found Materials: Wooden Crates, Tarp, Fabric, Crate, Plastic Bags

Installation

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Bed & Breakfast is a work of installation art, entirely made using found materials, that I created in collaboration with Simrun Devgan, in order to critique the ongoing problematic phenomenon of “slum tourism” that many people in the third world countries have fallen victim to. “Slum Tourism” is a branch of tourism that has gained popularity in the twenty first century, wherein slums—and by relation, poverty—are aestheticized due to their “visual appeal”, and their sense of “organized chaos”, by tourists from developed countries. Such aestheticization has a negative impact on slum dwellers, as their increasing popularity as “tourist spots” has resulted in an insufficient amount of money being spent in order to better the living conditions of the slum dwellers.

 

By making a number of aesthetic as well as geographic decisions, such as arranging the found materials in a certain composition in order to make them aesthetically appealing to an audience, and choosing to erect this shelter right beside a park bench, we wanted to emphasize the fact that while we, as privileged Canadians and immigrants, are fortunate enough to get to make these choices, making a haphazard shelter made out of whatever materials one can get their hands on is a matter of survival for the poor. There is nothing “beautiful” about their struggle.

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Description

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Four found wooden crates are erected upright using ropes, in order to make walls, of which one forms a partition in order to divide the space into two units. The outer "walls" are covered using an old drop cloth in order to shelter the structure from rain and snow. A found green tarp acts as a roof for the similar purpose of providing shelter from the sun, snow, and rain. Items such as aluminium foils and take-out containers are placed in between gaps of the crates to provide insulation. There's plastic bags and old rags that have ended up in the two units of our "slum" after a stormy night. One plastic milk-crate on a clean piece of drop cloth provides for a relatively more appealing place to sit at.

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