Atul Bhalla Auscultation: False Clouds and Real Deluges
Vadehra Art Gallery
During a tea break in Ranjeetpura, a village in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, the multidisciplinary artist Atul Bhalla noticed marbled sandstone on a nearby fence that resembled a piece of meat. After bringing the stone home, Bhalla featured it in (2023), an installation in his exhibition “Auscultation: False Clouds and Real Deluges.” Here, he placed it also recalled one of Bhalla’s earlier photographic works, (2017), in which he photographed meat of indeterminate origin on a white plate. At the time, its significance was clear: the rising tide of intolerance in India that had led to the 2015 lynching of a Muslim man by a Hindu mob on suspicion of having slaughtered a calf and storing the beef at home.
