Leisure Valley sculptures falling apart
As many as eight sculptures in Leisure Valley, once the pride and joy of the city, have turned into an eyesore. The park opposite the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Sector 10, which hosts installations and sculptures by renowned sculptors such as Shiv Singh and Charanjit Singh Matharu, installed in 1991, lie unattended and uncared for. The metal installations of both these artists are rusting away, while their masonry artworks are either partially or fully damaged.
In another part of Leisure Valley, renowned artist and first principal of the Government College of Art Sardari Lal Parasher’s landscape sculpture, “Undivided Punjab”, is in terrible shape. The 16-foot tall concrete sculpture, designed and installed in 1967 and conceived as a monument on the reorganisation of Punjab, has masonry eroding at the base, while the weather gods over the years have discoloured the artwork and the Punjabi inscription on it to such an extent that it can no longer be read.
The sculpture of a third artist, HS Kulkarni, a creation in steel sheets has been almost completely eaten up by rust. Avtarjit Dhanjal’s marble stone mural is chipped in different places. Shiv Singh’s environment-friendly galvanised pipe maze is dull and decaying.
All these sculptures were intended to be part of a Sculpture Park that had been thought up by the North Zone Cultural Centre back in 1991. They are shoddy and unkempt today, lost in a bureaucratic maze owned by no one. Ironically, another of Parasher’s mural called Vidya Valanj (States of Knowledge), selected by Le Corbusier himself, is in perfectly good condition. The mural, also in the open, stands on top of the main building of the Post Graduate Government College, Sector 11, formerly called the Government College for Men.
The Tribune spoke to several officials in the Chandigarh Administration’s Cultural Affairs Department, Engineering Department, which is ostensibly in charge of maintenance; the city’s Lalit Kala Akademi, the director and the deputy curator of the Government Museum and Art Gallery, but none of them agreed to speak on record. Some officials refused to speak at all, or answer phone messages. Many passed the buck to another department in the city. A few spoke strictly on the condition of anonymity.
“The responsibility of maintaining the sculptures directly falls on the authorities of the premises or the building in question,” a senior official from the administration told The Tribune. The administration, he added, is not responsible for sculptures installed inside the Chandigarh College of Architecture or any other institute or building.
The official said maintenance of the sculptures in Leisure Valley was supposed to be the responsibility of the Government Museum & Art Gallery. Vikram Dhiman, whose installation “Udaan” is among those displayed in Leisure Valley, said, “It is disheartening to see your artwork in such bad shape. Any artist would feel encouraged and proud once their work is recognised by the local bodies and is acquired for public display. Sculptures need proper maintenance and care.”
Dhiman said his love for the city and his college, GCA, motivated him to present the sculpture to the Chandigarh Administration, which was then installed in Leisure Valley. He was even willing to restore his artwork on his own if the administration was no longer interested in looking after these.
