Dohrana, 2021
Dohrana is a film on Urdu poetry that has emerged from Divecha’s ongoing collaboration with Sharjah’s municipal gardeners. The poems express longing, migration, hunger and farmers’ rights. ‘Dohrana’ was filmed at landscaping sites found in the UAE.
Gallery 354, 2019
A reflection on the namesake gallery within the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s southwest wing, which houses objects from Melanesia.
Panel, 2018
A single partition panel is acquired from Frieze Art Fair’s contractor, and exhibited at a group show in a New York gallery, after which it is returned to the art fair for regular use.
Beej, 2017
‘Beej’ (seeds in Urdu) activates a potential for farming amongst Sharjah’s municipal gardeners, who hail from Pakistan. They will sow and grow seeds sourced from their native farms at a public roundabout.
Train to Rouen, 2017
A train from Paris to Rouen is delayed by 5 minutes as an artistic gesture, bringing into question our relationship with time, light, the railway industry, and Claude Monet’s ‘The Gare Saint Lazare’ (1877).
Road Marking, 2017
Working with crews who maintain road markings in Dubai and Manhattan, paint is applied on grey boards, separating it from the urban substrate, transforming maintenance into formal expression.
Veedu, 2016
‘Veedu’ (house in Malayalam) follows the architectural design journey of an Indian family living in Sharjah, UAE who desire to build a house back home in Kerala. In the process they remit Gulf aesthetics & currency.
Sweeping, 2016
The routes of five municipal street sweepers are remapped to converge towards Sharjah Art Museum. Everyday, they deposit freshly collected trash bags in a row, creating an ephemeral public work.
Warehouse Project, 2016
The artist bartered the exhibition space with a Trading Company requiring extra storage facilities, in exchange for the goods to be exhibited. By diverting capital flows art, commerce and commodities are conflated.
Portrait Sessions, 2016
Divecha invites participants to paint his portrait for AED150. Each session’s duration is decided by how much time AED 150 can buy according to the participant’s professional rate. AED 150 approximates the daily wage for UAE workers.
Negative heaps (of designated waste), 2015
Fabricating tile patterns that display cultural iconography on UAE underpass walls is an intricate process generating waste. Discarded tile pieces are systematically collected, archived and exhibited.
Shaping Resistance, 2015
Municipal gardeners are invited to design hedge patterns at the park they maintain. Drawing workshops with the gardeners produce designs, which are now maintained as permanent works.
Boulder Plot, 2014
Giant boulders with drill holes are hand picked from quarries. These holes result from the violent rock blasting process. Post the exhibit the boulders are returned to enter into the construction market.
Miziara Architects, 2014
A father and son imagine a house on a 3D software in their native place in Miziara, Lebanon. A patriarchal design journey unfolds as the floors stack up.
Reclaimed Void, 2014
A pre-cast concrete wall is suspended in limbo within an architectural void. With the sky-roof above and the floor below, this permanent installation will hover indefinitely in an in-between state.
Degenerative Disarrangement, 2013
Pavement bricks with parallel yellow marks are removed from a site. At the exhibition site a hired mason installs the bricks within demanding time constraints workers regularly face, resulting in arbitrary patterns.