︎




UNSCRIPTED  DEVIATIONS (#1-#8)
2017
Archival pigment print on Fine Art Baryt
160 x 106 cm each 


Chandigarh’s increasing deterioration – which reveals itself in, among other things, nature’s creeping reconquest of its buildings – is also addressed by Kay Walkowiak in the photographs of the 2017 series Unscripted Deviations. These images show close-up shots of blackened, cracked façades in which the monsoon rains have left their marks and wasps have nested. With its hexagon-like honeycomb structure, the wasps’ nest as a natural form of “architecture” seems to evoke the planned city of Chandigarh and its strict division into individual sections just as much as it contradicts it. The exhibited photographs – like the 2017 video work The City Lost presented in the exhibition – resemble vanitas depictions of the utopian visions associated with Chandigarh.



Text: Stephanie Damiantisch, Leopold Museum, Vienna 2017