While creating the artwork, I drew similarities between Pune and Jakarta, the busy traffic, and the behaviour of people. I chose a local newspaper bought at the roadside as my material, because I am inspired by the images of the local; the closeness to the community or society, due to cultural events featured. Citizens know what is going on today, and newspapers can provide a different experience for the people who read it, because I think the news in a newspaper is the real culture that exists in the city of Pune.

The images exhibit diversity, ranging from advertising beauty, people dying, luxury commodities, celebrity images, housing advertisements, etc. I combine the images randomly with text taken from the newspapers too, creating a nature of teasing and mocking. There is not necessarily any relation between one image and the other. The concept of playing with images and text are applied to me when working. In the process of making the collage, various people came forward. The security guards, hotel employees, and people passing by were curious about my work, and some even interacted with me. The choice of the studio space has helped this interaction. For me, the interaction is more critical than the final work. The most important point of this residency is how artistic activity becomes part of the community and people can join in any artistic activity, such as the security guard who is interested in making a collage, because he saw the familiar images in his life. It’s a kind of participatory art.

After the interaction and response, I then concluded that in the end the physical work that I do is not so important, but the crucial aspect is when I get the impact during the making of the work, where people are smiling and commenting on images and text. They certainly have the reference and reading newspapers that contain news daily and they consume every day, until finally they are interested in participating and making a collage too. Images of the newspaper are easily recognisable and easy to digest, because each morning, they get to see or read newspapers.

I deliberately chose an existing workspace that ordinary people walk through, back and forth, because I wanted no interaction with the person who passed it to get a response or input on my final work. My observation through this process is that the artwork should have a relationship with their daily lives