Confrontation-2

As we sit and breathe and enjoy these works of art, the world is in its last stages of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and ready to welcome 5IR, which will be headlined by AI (artificial intelligence). The common thread through all these stages of industrial revolution has remained the human being’s engagement with machines that it created for its own betterment, but couldn’t help but make peace with the chaos or destruction it may have unleashed. Rameshwar Broota’s Confrontation series, of which this Untitled work is a later example, has dealt with this encounter between man and machine ever since he started working on it since the end of 1970s. The artist explains that he shows the man (depicted through a male body) looming large over the machine or parts shown because he believes, ‘man is inherently a fighter, someone who will face struggles unequivocally, even against steel and cement structures that are invincible.’