Hema Upadhyay’s Loco Foco Motto works on a similar premise, in which a familiar domestic object is turned into an unsettling and even ominous thing. Upadhyay constructs a large chandelier that dangles from the ceiling in the gallery. As a motif of middle-class aspiration, the chandelier has recently and memorably been employed by Arvind Adiga in his book, The White Tiger where his amoral protagonist, Balram Halwai, signals his rise from the underclass by installing a lavish crystal chandelier in his otherwise bare room. However, Upadhyay’s chandelier is not made of crystal. Inappropriately for a light fixture, it is opaque, for it is made of little slivers of wood that on closer inspection turn out to be matchsticks. One cannot light this chandelier without setting it ablaze.

Compressing upward mobility and self-combustion into a single object, Upadhyay offers a chilling comment on the incendiary potential of social processes that we consider ‘growth’ but whose fulfillment may contain the seeds of a larger destruction.