gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers

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gauri gill exhibits the village on the highway

 

Gauri Gill’s The Village on the Highway is an architectural exploration of social resilience, capturing the improvised spatial strategies of Indian farmers’ protests. On view at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, the exhibition presents 90 photographs that offer an architectural reading of the movement’s material culture. The large-format analog works showcase the transformation of roadsides into self-sustaining settlements, where farming vehicles became shelter, tarpaulin sheets became walls, bamboo structures formed partitions, and doors were cut through fabric enclosures, creating adaptable spaces for rest, cooking, bathing, and communal gathering.

 

The road itself was also reimagined as fertile ground — small patches of earth where vegetables were planted to provide sustenance. Objects of daily life, including cooking pots, khus coolers, and mosquito nets, also take on a sculptural quality in her compositions, highlighting both necessity and resourcefulness. Photographing these adaptive structures, Gill reconstructs their material presence within the gallery, reinforcing the ingenuity of the living environments, the urgency of the series, and the plight of the marginalized farmers. The show opened on February 4th, and will remain on view until March 4th, 2025.

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
all images © Gauri Gill | courtesy of the artist and Vadehra Art Gallery

 

 

an architectural exploration of social resilience

 

Gauri Gill, known for her immersive and collaborative photographic practice, has long explored rural and marginalized communities, using her medium to capture the resilience, ingenuity, and self-sufficiency embedded in their lived environments. In The Village on the Highway, which was created over a year in 2021, the Indian photographer turns her lens on the ephemeral yet highly adaptive structures built by protesting farmers who camped for over a year along highways leading into New Delhi.

 

The series encapsulates what Gill describes as ‘an unusual, handmade, and homegrown architecture of resistance.’ Farmers, contesting deregulation policies threatening their livelihoods, transformed their agricultural vehicles — tractors, trolleys, and tempos — into makeshift homes, weathering extreme conditions from searing heat to monsoon rains. In her large-format analog photographs, Gill documents how this temporary infrastructure functioned as an improvised but highly effective living environment. The Village on the Highway by Gauri Gill is presented by Vadehra Art Gallery at D-40 Defence Colony, New Delhi, running from February 4th to March 4th, 2025.

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
Gauri Gill presents The Village on the Highway

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
the photographs captures the makeshift homes of farmers contesting deregulation policies  

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
capturing the improvised spatial strategies of their protests   

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
tractors became shelter

village-on-the-highway-gauri-gill-designboom-01

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
the large-format analog works showcase the transformation of roadsides into self-sustaining settlements

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
doors were cut through fabric enclosures, creating adaptable spaces for rest, cooking, bathing, and gathering

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
tarpaulin sheets became walls and bamboo structures formed partitions

village-on-the-highway-gauri-gill-designboom-02

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
‘an unusual, handmade, and homegrown architecture of resistance’

gauri gill captures adaptable shelters amid tractors and textiles by india's protesting farmers
the exhibition is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi

 

 

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project info:

 

name: The Village on the Highway

photographer: Gauri Gill | @_gauri_gill_

gallery: Vadehra Art Gallery | @vadehraartgallery

location: New Delhi, India

dates: 4th February — 4th March, 2025

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