TUSHAR JOAG

This work is a part of a series that the artist created based on the plight of hawkers in Mumbai. The city of Mumbai has 300,000 street vendors while the city can legally accommodate only 17,000 making the remaining 283,000 illegal. The Municipality and the police department conduct periodical surprise raids to evict these vendors where upon the vendors have to disperse in a moment with all their goods on their person - or else the goods are confiscated.

The artist has designed vending tables/carts that fold up and transform on the spot, creating a temporary camouflage for the vendors. These vending machines are in the form of mail boxes, lamp posts and other street furniture. In this particular work the artist depicts one such postbox man shown here in the process of morphing from a vendor into a mailbox.