A Story of Misfortunes: An Effective Installation

Work by Ranjeet Singh

Delivery enabling Oxytocin, a hormonal injection becomes a growth enhancing catalyst in several backward parts of India. To procure girls for sex work, in such places, girls are injected with, mostly with the consent of their parents, this hormone for three to four years. By the time they reach their teens they will have the physical growth of young women in their twenties. Then they are trafficked by the agents to the red streets in urban places. Ranjeet Singh ‘showcases’ this issue in a minimal installation titled ‘A Story of Misfortunes’ by presenting the photographs of some of these girls (with their permission and knowledge) in glass jars along with the vials of Oxytocin and syringes. Ranjeet underlines the pathos by placing one gourd/vegetable which is also injected with the same hormone by profit prone farmers. Born in Jharkhand, Ranjeet obtained MFA from the Banaras Hindu University. He has been painting and documenting the lives of the slum children for five years. Currently Ranjeet has devoted his creative energies to artistically represent the life and times of the coals, coal mine works and the drastic environmental and health issues that the mining has caused in his native state. ‘The Black Earth’ was his recent solo show at the Dhoomimal Gallery in Delhi. A version of the featured installation was also exhibited in the ‘It’s Big’ show by the Po10tial Group curated by me in the CKP Galleries, Bengaluru in 2016. Ranjeet Singh lives and works in Delhi.