Tanya Goel’s most recent series of frescoes ‘Fragments C.P.W.D., New Delhi’ is sourced from demolished buildings dating to the modernist era of affordable housing in Delhi between the 1950s–70s. Ranging from painted wall fragments in pastel blues, lilacs, greens, or pinks to broken pieces of lattice-work, the artist makes minimal grid- like interventions in the form of drawings on the surface of the debris. Incarnating the archetype of the artist as an archeologist, Tanya Goel excavates the various layers of an ever-changing cityscape in the wake of rapid
urbanization. She also preserves these layers by making her own pigments from a diverse array of materials, including concrete, glass, aluminium, and foils which are meticulously numbered and archived.

Written by Birgid Uccia, Wasteland, 2018