RANJANI SHETTAR:

My work Me, no, not me, buy me, eat me, wear me, have me, me, no, not me—it has a really long title because the idea was a little long.

NARRATOR:

Ranjani Shettar is a young contemporary artist who lives and works in a small village outside of Bangalore, India.

SHETTAR:

I’m trying to address consumerism through that artwork. I have a feeling that everything that’s on supermarket shelves somehow keeps saying that—”buy me, eat me, wear me, have me”—all the time. So I was trying to address that through this object, car, which represented the peak of consumerism for me. So I got these old car bodies, cut them into strips, and then made them into these objects. I was trying to address the issues of, you know, what’s most important in a household? And what’s really essential? You know, if we went back a couple of hundred years, in every civilization, basketry and pottery were the most important things, most essential things. But then, basket is something so utilitarian. And I’ve employed basket-weaving principles in Me, no, not me, but you know, it’s—it’s very basic weaving. It is not complicated.

NARRATOR:

Shettar has spoken of weaving the histories of different recycled cars together to form these baskets. She harvested old cars from junkyards and trained metal workers to weave them together using basic basketry techniques. The resulting objects overlay the histories of mass-manufactured automobiles and the timeless tradition of hand-woven baskets.