Sadak

Since the 1990s, hand-painted signs in India – one of the characteristic elements of the country's urban landscape – have been widely replaced by more technologically advanced media. Today, they survive in a vernacular culture very distinct from the productions large-scale digital. The work of sign painters constitutes a visual itinerary through the historical-economic changes of society Indian over the years; paintings that emerge in shapes and forms bright colors and humanize the marked aesthetics of the subjects and objects of the globalized capitalism. The book presents part of the photographic archives of the artist Aradhana Seth: a multitude of drawings on shop shutters, doors, signs and walls of various places of interest and businesses. Made during from the last decades, the images are divided into three thematic sections : trade and services, culture, nature and landscape. The publication is completed by biographies of Raza Abbas, Praveen Chauan, Prashant Janardhan Dalvi and Shakeel, some of the artists who created the paintings photographed; a critical text by Kajri Jain, lecturer in visual culture, who defines the theoretical framework within which to interpret these visual forms, as well than an autobiographical text by the artist Francesco Clemente.