Pub on the Street
Vandana
2016
Performance
1 hr 30 minutes
Kingston University, London
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy Vandana The Artist
DESCRIPTION
Pub on the Street is an unstaged live performance built around the brick piece Streets on Weekends — a London brick cast in plaster and alcohol. I invite passersby to smell the brick, guess what it smells like, and then offer them sips of wine and beer, creating a dialogue and rapport through the unexpected intimacy of the exchange.
The performance carries a personal and cultural confrontation: I am a teetotaler, wearing a typical Indian outfit, offering hard drinks on a London street. In India, it is a taboo — not considered acceptable in society for a woman to drink, smoke, or serve hard drinks. The act of offering alcohol becomes a site where my transition to the West, my search for balance and belonging in a new culture, and the distance between the world I come from and the one I stand in are made visible — not through explanation, but through the simple act of an Indian woman handing a stranger a glass of wine.
Vandana 