The series of paintings titled ‘Falling Fables’ are based on my photographs documenting various parts of the city of Delhi, where ruins from the past rub shoulders with present-day structures, revealing the many contradictions and shifting nature of urban landscape. Their surface consists of numerous addresses of missing monuments listed as protected sites under the Archeological Survey of India, dispersed amidst fragments of poems/ phrases on architecture and loss.
A few years ago, surveys of archeological and historical monuments in India revealed that a number of monuments had gone missing due to rapid implementation of development projects, haphazard urbanization and inefficient protection laws. The Archeological Survey of India had listed around 200 sites/objects being lost all over the country. Among these missing monuments, 35 were listed as protected; of these 12 are in Delhi, where the Archeological Survey is headquartered. I began visiting these monument sites scattered all over Delhi, some easily accessible while others surrounded by urban housing or amidst congested market places that are in the process of being lost due to rapid commercialization and construction. While my attempt is not to venerate the past, the work seeks to highlight the continuity and shifting nature of urban landscape, where ruins are seen as metaphors of individual and universal experience. 
(Reena Kallat)