1 - 22 April, 2023
The 22 embroidered works in the exhibition are textile interpretations of Madhvi and Manu Parekh’s paintings (1971-2021) by Karishma Swali, Chanakya's Creative Director, and brought to life by more than 300 enterprising artisans of the Chanakya Ateliers and School of Craft. They were commissioned by Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Dior women’s collections, as part of the set design for the Dior spring-summer 2022 runway show at Paris.
A flexible word—‘mūḷ’—alludes to earthiness, and can mean ‘native’, like the embroidery techniques used in the artworks, but also ‘primal,’ like the raw force they exude. This epic collaboration dispenses with the hierarchies of fashion, art, and craft. The art works have required the brilliance, labor, and capacities of all involved and, above all, attests to the immense potential of Indian craft.
26 February – 1 December, 2023
The 3rd edition of the Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace in Nahargarh Fort has once more turned a 19th-century Palace into a Sculpture Gallery with works displayed throughout the meandering rooms and grand courtyards. Curated by Peter Nagy, traditional Indian architecture creates a dramatic backdrop for contemporary sculptures. Exploring the spatial potential of the Palace with its over-all delicate fresco wall paintings, the most spectacular works are the ones that respond to the intricacies of this unusual site that successfully challenges the white cube.
Image: installation view Daisy Xavier/Bene Fonteles
https://www.instagram.com/thesculptureparkjaipur/related_profiles/?hl=en
5 November, 2022 – 22 January, 2023
‘Could imagination be the only weapon in the war against reality?’ (Nalini Malani)
Nalini Malani’s radically inventive practice spans five decades and is celebrated in this first major Australian survey, exclusive to AGSA. Drawing on AGSA's own substantial holdings of Malani’s work, this exhibition arcs from her early experimentations in film and photography in 1969, to what she describes as ‘video shadow/plays’ such as Gamepieces, 2003-2020, after which this Australian premiere is named.
Image:
Installation view Gamepieces by Nalini Malani, 2015, MoMa, New York
https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/nalini-malani-gamepieces/
13 October, 2022 - 9 January, 2023
The Schirn Kunsthalle is presenting the first extensive survey exhibition of Gauri Gill’s multi¬layered photographic work, bringing together around 240 works from pivotal series. Gill’s quiet, concentrated images focus the viewer’s gaze on barely perceived peripheral areas of Indian society. In an open, collaborative process that resists documentary conventions, the artist devotes her work to themes such as survival, self-assertion, identity, and belonging, as well as conceptual issues relating to memory and authorship.
Image:
Untitled (5), from the series Acts of Appearance, 2015-ongoing
© Gauri Gill
3 September, 2022 – 27 August, 2023
Bharti Kher’s 18-foot tall painted bronze sculpture, Ancestor (2022), graces Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the entrance to Central Park, marking the most ambitious work in her career. More than 20 heads adorn the front of the universal mother figure, embodying male and female multiplicity. She is draped traditionally in a sari, and the artist has elaborated a fantastical hairstyle with a multi-lobed bun and three long braids. Kher’s depiction creates an image of a powerful goddess with her multicultural and diverse children. She embodies the possibility for an interconnected and a shared sense of belonging, manifesting the position of the mother as a figure of empowerment, creation, and refuge, who manifests as both human and otherworldly.
Courtesy the artist; Hauser & Wirth; Perrotin, Paris; Nature Morte, New Delhi; and is in the collection of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi.
23 June – 4 August, 2022
Munem Wasif’s image-based works explore the notion of trace in its various forms. His complex installations often mix photographs with moving images, archive documents or collected paraphernalia to reveal notions of impermanence and insecurity. In his film Machine Matter, Wasif, who is based in Dhaka, examines the death of the jute industry in Bangladesh and the destruction of the livelihoods the ‘golden fibre’ once supported. Using long takes and tight shots, the artist turns his lens to an abandoned jute mill and the former workers who ran the machines—the union of man and machine that formed the heart of a major industry.
Image: Machine Matter, 2017, still, single channel, 14 min/06 sec, black and white, stereo, loop
Just released, Moving focus, India is a first-of-its-kind exploration of Indian art made since 1900. From long-lost paintings to ephemeral sculptures, from whimsical performances to iconic public murals, and from independent films to landmark design objects, the surprising and provocative contents of this book have been provided by an exceptional and varied group of experts.
Collector’s edition:
A numbered edition of 350 copies – two hardback volumes in a clamshell box with two limited edition prints by artists Nilima Sheikh and Vivan Sundaram. 620 pages with over 1000 colour illustrations. By (author) Mortimer Chatterjee. Published by: The Shoestring Publisher.
22 March 2022 onwards
365 intimate drawings constitute the recent body of watercolours by Atul Dodiya, painted during a one-year period marked by the crises caused by consecutive waves of the pandemic. Away from his generously sized studio, accommodative of his large canvases and tables strewn with tubes of oil paint and brushes of all sizes, Dodiya worked at a temporary desk-board. Awkwardly placed within the confines of his domestic space, Dodiya painted one watercolour a day, dwelling upon solitude and the compulsions behind forced social isolation.
Image: From the series Walking with the Waves, 2020-21, watercolour on paper
16 February – 1 July, 2022
Order of Magnitude marks Jitish Kallat’s first major solo exhibition in West Asia and the Levant. Presenting new works that include paintings, multimedia installations, drawings and site-specific interventions, the exhibition reflects Kallat’s profound deliberations on the overarching interconnectivity on the individual, universal, planetary and extra-terrestrial dimensions.
https://www.ishara.org/exhibition/jitish-kallat-order-of-magnitude/
7 February – 26 June, 2022
The exhibition features Ashmolean objects alongside paintings, sculptures and installations by Ali Kazim, one of the most exciting artists working in Pakistan today. During a residency in 2019, Kazim spent days browsing through the Museum’s South Asian collection, examining several objects up close. Kazim’s engagement with the material and visual traditions encourages us in turn to reflect on how the past informs and influences the present. The exhibition coincides with the 75th anniversary of Pakistan’s creation and is accompanied by a catalogue.
© Vipul Sangoi
Manchukkar | The Seafarers of Malabar is the first publication by K R Sunil, one of the leading contemporary photographers working in India today. Featuring texts by Dr M H Ilias and Birgid Uccia, the publication comprises of 34 black-and-white portraits of seafaring labourers, where each photograph is accompanied by their written life stories, translated from Malayalam into English.
Manchukkar were the traditional seamen from Malabar, the southwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Pioneers of cross-regional labour vital to the functioning of the maritime trade throughout the Arabian Sea and beyond, the history of the Manchukkar is the history of undocumented labour, illegal migration and cultural exchange. The publication features — perhaps for the first time — the stories of the long-forgotten seafarers, disclosing the wider historical, social and cultural contexts in which the portraits are situated.
Publisher:
Kunstdepot Goeschenen, Switzerland
http://www.kunstdepot-goeschenen.com/
21 May – 12 September, 2021
M HKA presents the first mid-career survey exhibition of artworks by Shilpa Gupta, bringing together many of her key works for the first time. As one of the established artists of the Mumbai contemporary art scene to have emerged since the 1990s, this exhibition offers an overview of the practice Gupta has been developing for more than twenty years. It will consider the evolution of her work over this period, foregrounding the speculative nature of her practice, as well as the depth of her critical engagement with psychology, behaviour, politics and language.
Image: Someone Else - A library of 100 books written anonymously or under pseudonyms, 2011
https://www.muhka.be/programme/detail/1405-shilpa-gupta-today-will-end
Bijoy Jain and his architectural office Studio Mumbai have been awarded the fourteenth Alvar Aalto Medal. The award, carrying the name of the Finnish architect and designed by Aalto himself, was founded in 1967 in order to honour creative architectural work. In making its selection, the jury emphasised the Studio’s skilful synthesis of architecture and craftsmanship. Studio Mumbai’s work reflects an understanding of the unique geographical, climatic and social characteristics of the environment, giving insightful consideration to them in their design work. The award was presented to the medallist in February 2021 at the Finnish Embassy in New Delhi, India.
© Alexander Wolfe
27 October, 2020 – 27 June, 2021
The six site-specific canvases that compose Karmakar’s installation Passage at the Asia Society Triennial were created in response to the living- and dining-rooms of a 19th century residence on Governors Island in New York City. They are presented as architectural remnants taken out of temporal and geographical context, to be appreciated as objects, not just mimetic representations of a particular time and place. Karmakar pictorially constructs his canvases to reimagine the architectural interior of the house formerly occupied by members of the U.S. military. Infiltrating the intimate domestic spaces, he discreetly inserts domestic iconography from Indian culture, blurring the lines between real and imaginary space.
© Bruce M. White, 2021, courtesy of Asia Society
https://asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/asia-society-triennial-we-do-not-dream-alone
October 2020 - February 2021
Curated by Justin Paton, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran welcomes visitors to the Gallery with an exuberant installation of guardian and protector figures in the Gallery's historical entrance vestibule, titled Avatar Towers. Acquired by the museum, the title invokes the role of avatars in contemporary digital culture while exploring the older sense of the word (particularly in Hinduism) as the bodily incarnation of a spirit or deity. Nithiyendran has created more than 70 sculptures in bronze and clay, their polymorphous bodies embellished with luscious glazes in super-charged colours.
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?page=1&group_accession=64.2021.1-68
23 September, 2020 – 6 June, 2021
Whitechapel Gallery unveils a major new work, Can You Hear Me? by Nalini Malani, as part of its prestigious annual programme of artist commissions. Can You Hear Me? is Malani’s first UK commission, comprising 88 animations projected on the walls of the Gallery’s historic interior. Made between 2017 and 2020, they feature overlapping hand-drawn images and notes on the iPad as well as fragments of quoted text. In this new production, the violent death of a child in India launches a flow of images and ideas that transcend national trauma to address global issues of social injustice. Moral outrage combines with a rollicking delight in satire and absurdity, referencing mythic characters, intellectuals and poets.
https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/nalini-malani-can-you-hear-me/
20 June – 29 November, 2020
As the winner of the 7th edition of the Joan Miró Prize in 2019, Nalini Malani has conceived and curated, in collaboration with Martina Millà, an immersive exhibition. Inviting visitors to explore some of the main topics at the core of her work, such as ancient mythologies and contemporary injustice, the show focuses on the untiring defence of the silenced and dispossessed, particularly women. You Don’t Hear Me brings together some of the most important works from the past five decades and offers a unique dialogue between Nalini Malani’s early films from the late 1960s, paintings series and installations from the past fifteen years, and her most recent digital animations.
7 March – 11 October, 2020
This group exhibition is the first in a series of two, exploring the relationship between humans and nature. The works on view in the first chapter draw attention to the ways in which the environment has been appropriated in the pursuit of power and resources, shedding light on the repercussions for both nature and the social fabric.
The exhibition will be on view at YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku from 13 November, 2020 - 21 February, 2021.
Image: From the series Siamese Trees, 2018-2019
https://migrosmuseum.ch/en/exhibitions/potential-worlds-1-planetary-memories
7 - 15 February, 2020
Curated by Diana Campell Betancourt, DAS 2020 convenes a critical mass of artists, thinkers and participants who provoke us to reconsider (art) histories, movement, borders and fault lines. Considering the various ruptures that have realigned and continue to shift the face of our moving planet, seismic movements do not adhere to statist or nationalist frameworks; their epicentres don’t privilege historical imperial centres over the so-called peripheries. DAS 2020 is about shaking up our understanding of the present and the past, creating opportunities to make and write (art) history from new perspectives.
Shezad Dawood’s University of NonDualism (Dhaka Iteration), 2020, is a multi-layered series of collaborations which takes its starting point from the work of Muzharul Islam, a modernist architect, urban planner, educator and activist hailing from Bangladesh (1923–2012). Considered the Grand Master of regional modernism in South Asia, Islam’s style and influence dominated Bangladesh’s architectural scene in the 1960s and 70s. Referencing Islam’s legacy and his approach to non-dualism, Dawood’s project enacts a series of dynamic collaborations, creating a synergy between cross-disciplinary approaches akin to Islam who regularly collaborated with artists, poets and singers.
1 February – 10 May, 2020
This exhibition, curated by Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson, brings together a group of international artists, whose creative practices are in constant dialogue with the complex narratives of cultural heritage, history writing, and freedom of speech. Their art examines borders between public and domestic spaces in rapidly changing cities, underlining colonial structures and national aspirations, while at the same time mapping the geography in terms of gender, class, ethnicity and religion. “To be 'unhomed´,”' says Indian scholar and cultural theorist Homi K. Bhabha, “is not to be homeless, but rather to escape easy assimilation or accommodation”.
30 January – 30 June, 2020
Curated by Roobina Karode, this solo exhibition primarely explores the medium of paper and the fascination of Zarina Hashmi towards it. Woodcut prints, lithographs and etchings along with a few sculptural objects testify to her fascination for architecture and symmetry, displaying how the interaction with varied cultures influenced the themes, techniques and methods of her poetically minimal visual language. The trauma of Partition and pain of un-belongingness take complex existential dimensions, through a mystically elevated minimalism that takes history as its point of departure. Home is interpreted in the form of nostalgia, emotional states, relations, geographies and place.
26 January – 29 February, 2020
Curated by Hoor al Quasimi, the director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, the points out the effects of colonial power in hardening 'differences across ethnic, religious, linguistic, and national affiliations' and states an aim to foreground 'new relations with Central Asian, West Asian, and African contexts.' Dissonances between and among humans are compounded more recently by the environmental emergency that now confronts us, a crisis borne of humanity’s alienation from nature. Just as our ties from one another have come to be defined by separation and polarisation, our bonds with non-human entities and life forms are increasingly characterised by distance and estrangement. More than 80 artists display theirs works across 13 exhibition sites spread across the city of Lahore, built and used by three sovereigns—the Mughals, the British, and the postcolonial Pakistan state. In this constellation, three modes of governance and temporalities overlap and fold into one another.
27 November, 2019
Hetain Patel, whose practice encompasses moving-image works, sculpture, photography, and performance, has won the 2019 Film London Jarman Award. The award is named after the late British director Derek Jarman. Known for creating works centered on marginalized identities, Hetain Patel mixes humour with popular culture to explore subjects that range from power structures and immigration to language and memory. The Jump, 2015, a six-minute, two-channel video installation by the artist, was shot in his grandmother’s house in Bolton, in northwest England, which has housed numerous relatives as they migrated to the UK. Hetain Patel recreated his childhood memory of jumping off the family sofa while dressed as iconic Spiderman.
© Hetain Patel
21 October, 2019 – 10 January, 2021
Taking a Thread for a Walk takes its title from a famous admonition by Paul Klee, the artist and Bauhaus instructor, to learn the fundamentals of drawing by ‘taking a line for a walk’. At the multidisciplinary Bauhaus, that lesson extended to the design classes, where the reforming spirit of the new academy translated to textile design. At the same time, internationally fiber artists (mostly women) began to explore the sculptural possibilities of weaving, creating gorgeous but long misunderstood works. In her tapestry Mekka from 1968, Monika Correa dissolves borders of art, craft and design, developing a constructive language that highlights the flexibility of textiles, a medium that continues to defy easy categorization.
https://press.moma.org/exhibition/taking-a-thread-for-a-walk/
17 October, 2019 – 20 January, 2020
This fall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is celebrating the living legacy of artists with the exhibition ‘In the Company of Artists. 25 Years of Artists-in-Residence’, featuring works by Indian artists Bharti Kher, Dayanita Singh, and others.
https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/company-artists
5 September – 13 October, 2019
With her photographic series Acts of Appearance, Gauri Gill presents members of the Indian Adivasi community in Jawhar (Maharashtra) wearing masks as they 'perform' their daily activities. The community’s members are known for the papier-mâché objects that they create, including traditional masks that suggest spiritual beings. For Acts of Appearance, Gill commissioned craftsmen to produce a new set of masks, inspired instead by the community’s contemporary reality. In Gill’s framing, the masquerade upturns the conventions of the ethnographic gaze: although the villagers’ faces are hidden, their existence is reaffirmed through the object of disguise.
Image: Untitled (33) from Acts of Appearance, 2015
5 May, 2019 – 5 January, 2020
Interference Fringe by L N Tallur is a major survey exhibition exploring the conceptual practice of the artist. Curated by Gary Garrido Schneider, it features 26 artworks in a range of media including found objects, appropriated industrial machines, carved stone and wood, cast bronze, sculptures embedded in concrete, and a new work in film. Tallur often makes reference to cultural symbols and mythology including those from his native India. By pairing the sacred with the secular, handmade with machine-made, or decorative with functional, he purposefully obscures, transforms, and subverts the traditional reading of these varied references.
Image: Obituary Note, 2013
https://www.artsy.net/show/grounds-for-sculpture-interference-fringe-tallur-ln
4 June – 29 September, 2019
Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949-2015) was a committed sculptor who worked intensively with fiber before making significant forays into ceramic and bronze. The works presented in this retrospective, curated by Shanay Jhaveri, demonstrate how Mrinalini Mukherjee staged a series of radical interventions in her adaptation of craft and her approach to modernism. Imbued with a powerful, contemporary ethos, her sculptures bask in undoing the distinction between the traditional and the modern, transgressing art-historical categories.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/mrinalini-mukherjee-phenomenal-nature
8 June – 8 August, 2019
Curated by Anupa Mehta, RASA is the first ever solo exhibition of sculptures by Ravinder Reddy in Kolkata. Spanning over a time period of 1989 to 2019, the works on view demonstrate the departures and stylistic shifts in the artist’s work over a period of three decades. Reddy marries tradition with the contemporary to create works that are at once iconic as they are rooted in the vernacular. His sculptures depict the human form in all its vulnerable complexities, drawing from various sources such as traditional Indian religious statues, Coptic and Etruscan sculptures as well as the bold visual language of Pop Art. His bigger than life-size heads encapsulate the quintessential Reddy, oscillating between sharp simplicity and sensual overload to embody the populous, the everyday, the timeless and the undefined.
https://www.emamiart.com/artist-details/?artist_name=G.%20Ravinder%20Reddy
9 December, 2018 – 1 November, 2019
This is the 2nd edition of the The Sculpture Park, a not-for-profit initiative, located in the breathtaking Madhavendra Palace from 1892 which served as a royal pleasure retreat. Inaugurated in December 2017, The Sculpture Park is the first example of collaboration between state government and private cultural philanthropy in contemporary art. Curated by Peter Nagy and helmed by the Saat Saath Art Foundation, the exhibition attempts to foster greater engagement with contemporary art and Indian heritage, showcasing sculptures by Hemali Bhuta, Lynn Chadwick, Tanya Goel, Reena Saini Kallat, Bijoy Jain, Richard Long, Prashant Pandey, Manisha Parekh, Mark Prime, Ayesha Singh, Asim Waqif, and others.
11 May – 24 November, 2019
Curated by Roobina Karode, Chief Curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum, New Delhi, the group presentation features works by Nandalal Bose, Atul Dodiya, Rummana Hussain, G R Iranna, Jitish Kallat, Shakuntala Kulkarni and Ashim Purkayastha. Celebrating 150 Years of Mahatma Gandi, the artists critically engage with the many facets of Mahatma Gandhi, considering his philosophical ideas and their place in today’s complex world, in which violence and intolerance are still prevalent. Jitish Kallat’s ‘Covering Letter’ is a piece of historical correspondence beamed onto a curtain of traversable dry-fog; a brief letter written by Gandhi to Hitler in 1939 urging him to reconsider his violent means.
Image: Covering Letter, 2012
https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations/india
11 May - 24 November, 2019
Curated by Roobina Karode, Chief Curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum, New Delhi, the group presentation features works by Nandalal Bose, Atul Dodiya, Rummana Hussain, G R Iranna, Jitish Kallat, Shakuntala Kulkarni and Ashim Purkayastha. Celebrating 150 Years of Mahatma Gandhi, the artists critically engage with the many facets of Mahatma Gandhi, considering his philosophical ideas and their place in today’s complex world, in which violence and intolerance are prevalent. G R Iranna’s installation Naavu (We Together) uses padhukas, Indian slippers made of wood, associated since antiquity with spirituality and reverence. Gandhi’s padukhas, indicative of his adherence to non-violence in the rejection of leather, allude to his idea of passive political resistance, Satyagraha, attained through collective mass action of walking/marching.
https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations/india
28 January–4 March, 2019
Curator Sumakshi Singh, who is also an artist, employs her own interest in quantum physics and meditation to ask if the immaterial could possibly address the material, employing poetry, light, shadow, and object traces in an exploration into the energies that pulsate in unexplained space. Encompassing the mutable and the vibratory, a series of 26 artistic inquiries question and explore the appearance and understanding of form. Most of the works are culled from the collection of the Devi Art Foundation, established by Lekha and Anupam Poddar in 2005. The collection consists of artworks in media ranging from painting, sculpture, interactive installation, video, and photography. Representations from India's folk and tribal art forms — along with art from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Bangladesh, and Tibet — form the core of the collection.
13 December, 2018 – 31 March, 2019
Centuries of seafaring trade and ship-building (primarily the wind-dependent Dhows) have given the region of Malabar its distinct culture. There are only a handful of surviving seafarers and ship-builders today. K R Sunil had the fortune to meet almost all of them. They had endured the love as well as the wrath of the sea throughout their lives, with their faces having the stories etched on them. From ship-wrecks, uncertain voyages to life-changing courses, their tales are no short of wonder. Written down by K R Sunil and exhibited along his compelling series of 34 black-and-white photographs, they offer a fascinating journey into the history of the region.
Image: Manchukkar - The Seafarers of Malabar', 2018
© K R Sunil
1 February, 2019
The Asia Game Changer Award India, launched by Asia Society in 2017, is a signature gala celebration honouring the Asia Arts Game Changers during the week of the India Art Fair in New Delhi. The Awards pay tribute to artists and arts professionals who have made a significant contribution to the development of modern and contemporary art in Asia.
Co-chaired by Pheroza Godrej and Sangita Jindal, the award celebration witnessed 140 artists, academics, collectors, gallerists, and curators gathered to celebrate the 2019 awardees Gulammohammed Sheikh, Vibha Galhotra and Yang Yongliang.
Image: Gulammohammed Sheikh, Painting Still?, 2013
https://asiasociety.org/india/2019-asia-arts-game-changer-awards-india
12 December, 2018 – 29 March, 2019
Curated by Anita Dube, the 4th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale focuses on the desire for liberation and comradeship where the possibilities for a non-alienated life could spill into a ‘politics of friendship’. Those artists and communities pushed to the margins of dominant narratives will speak: not as victims, but as futurism’s cunning and sentient sentinels.
Arunkumar’s installation visually explores what is at stake in the environmental disharmonies that surround us. Repurposing solid waste materials collected from rubbish bins, roadsides or abandoned mounds of building scraps to create sculptural forms, he re-values the origins of his materials. The strategic juxtaposition of organic and recycled material with those of development (cement, aluminium) generates enlivened metaphors that posit the possibilities of thinking through the environment, not just about it.
12 December, 2018 – 29 March, 2019
Curated by Anita Dube, the 4th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale focuses on the desire for liberation and comradeship (away from the master and slave model), where the possibilities for a non-alienated life could spill into a ‘politics of friendship’. Those artists and communities pushed to the margins of dominant narratives will speak: not as victims, but as futurism’s cunning and sentient sentinels.
The hand-carved, raw-edged installation by Vinu V V consists of 3 pillars in Odollam wood, bulging with a massacre of male silhouettes pinned on nails. Based on the engrained culture of exorcism prevalent in the area the artists hails from, women considered to be possessed by a spirit had to hammer a long iron nail on a tree with their forehead in order to drive the spirit out of their body. In reversal of this practice, Vinu V V ‘crucifies’ the male agitators of a patriarchal society who castigate any deviance from the societal norm.
24 November, 2018 – 28 April, 2019
Ali Kazim is interested in the history of Pakistan’s landscapes and the ancient civilizations that once inhabited the region, particularly imagining the stories hidden in unexcavated remains. He regularly visits these areas, studying the clouds and mounds which form the contours of the landscapes, searching for pottery shards and remnants of buried cities. Working in a range of techniques, styles and scales, his delicate and textural paintings capture skyscapes and landscapes in their dormant and lifeless condition.
12 December, 2018 – 29 March, 2019
Curated by Anita Dube, the 4th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale focuses on the desire for liberation and comradeship (away from the master and slave model) where the possibilities for a non-alienated life could spill into a ‘politics of friendship’. Those artists and communities pushed to the margins of dominant narratives will speak: not as victims, but as futurism’s cunning and sentient sentinels.
2 December, 2018 – 17 February, 2019
Curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta and Puja Vaish, the exhibition attempts to trace textile practices, traditions and histories in contemporary Indian Art. It re-looks at the narratives invoked by a range of contemporary artists in conjunction with the museum’s textile collection, highlighting textile as a medium, metaphor and process. Exploring works of artists who have approached the process of art making by engaging ‘craft’ and ‘traditional’ practices, the exhibition offers a nuanced understanding of the traditional, the modern and the contemporary, blurring boundaries and defying easy categorization.
https://www.bdlmuseum.org/pdf/connecting_threads_pressrelease.pdf
29 June - 7 October, 2018
The exhibition at Haus der Kunst, curated by Deepak Ananth, is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging survey of Vivan Sundaram’s work at a European institution. The display is conceived as a sequence of juxtapositions with a view to suggesting how formal and thematic concerns ricochet from one work to another. History, Memory, Archive: the three keywords that the artist has designated as the overarching concerns of his practice are the signposts for articulating the overall structure of the exhibition, an open-ended framework for exploring the connections or disjunctures between these terms and themes.
Image: © Gireesh G.V.
https://hausderkunst.de/en/exhibitions/vivan-sundaram-disjunctures
13 April – 26 August, 2018
The first exhibition in France takes place in the historic salons of the Monnaie along the banks of the Seine, extending up the main stairway and continuing in the inner courtyard with monumental sculptures conceived especially for this retrospective. On display are iconic early sculptures alongside recent works, reflecting on how intimate and seemingly insignificant objects can offer a glimpse into personal and communal rituals as well as the cosmos at large. Selected pieces will be in conversation with the Monnaie’s permanent collection of metal artefacts to encourage reflection on the medium of metal, both in terms of its symbolic value as well as the technical and artistic skills required to hone it.
Image: Jal Mein Kumbh, Kumbh Mein Jal [The Water is in the Pot, The Pot is in the Water], 2012 © Martin Argyroglo
https://www.monnaiedeparis.fr/en/temporary-exhibitions/subodh-gupta
16 March – 11 June, 2018
Curated by Mami Kataoka SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement examines the world today by borrowing the word ‘superposition’, the quantum mechanical term that refers to an overlapping situation. The state of superposition lies across all conceptual levels: from different climates and cultures to views of nature and the cosmic orders, conceptions of Mother Earth and interpretations of land ownership, readings of human history and conditions, the history of modern and contemporary art and the meaning of abstractions. The 21st Biennale of Sydney offers a panoramic view of how they all come together in a state of 'equilibrium', while delving into the workings of individual phenomena, considering the equivalence of these opposing notions through the lens of 'engagement'.
Image: Index: pages (builders drawing), 2018 (detail)
16 March – 11 June, 2018
Curated by Mami Kataoka SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement examines the world today by borrowing the word ‘superposition’, the quantum mechanical term that refers to an overlapping situation. The state of superposition lies across all conceptual levels: from different climates and cultures to views of nature and the cosmic orders, conceptions of Mother Earth and interpretations of land ownership, readings of human history and conditions, the history of modern and contemporary art and the meaning of abstractions. The 21st Biennale of Sydney offers a panoramic view of how they all come together in a state of 'equilibrium', while delving into the workings of individual phenomena, considering the equivalence of these opposing notions through the lens of 'engagement'.
29 April – 07 October, 2018
For the first time the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presents a group exhibition, curated by Uta Ruhkamp, with works by six women artists from India: Vibha Galhotra, Bharti Kher, Prajakta Potnis, Reena Saini Kallat, Mithu Sen, and Tejal Shah. Facing India critically explores the history of the nation-state, its present and future from a female point of view. In their multimedia works, the six artists emphazise on historical and contemporary conflicts, such as border control, migration, colonialism, social inequality, identity, and gender.
https://www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de/exhibitions/facing-india/
7 March, 2018
This year’s Pritzker jury has selected Indian architect B V Doshi as the 2018 Pritzker Prize Laureate. A practitioner of architecture for over 70 years, B V Doshi had studied and worked with both Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in the 1950s. He adapted the principles and forms of modernism that he had absorbed from them to his work with local cultures, materials, and environments, from low-cost housing and academic institutions to urban planning projects. In so doing, he both redefined modern Indian architecture and shaped new generations of architects. Recognizing B V Doshi’s exceptional architecture as reflected in over a hundred buildings he has realized and his substantial contributions to humanity, it is the first time that the jury has bestowed architecture’s highest honor to an Indian architect.
© Iwan Baan
10 December, 2017 – 01 November, 2018
Embracing the spectacular Madhavendra Palace as a site of contemporary art, curator Peter Nagy has chosen a roster of established and emerging national and international artists to create India’s first sculpture park. Helmed by the Saat Saath Art Foundation, this exceptional exhibition occupies the historic apartments of the palace, including the courtyard. Sculptures by Arman, Huma Bhabha, Anita Dube, Subodh Gupta, Hans Josephsohn, Bharti Kher, Benitha Perciyal, Ravinder Reddy, LN Tallur, Thukral & Tagra, and others create a veritable treasure hunt for the visitor, encountering sculpture in all its contemporary diversity in a wide variety of displays and arrangements.
© Saat Saath Art Foundation
The Kalhath Institute, founded by the Lucknow Design Trust in 2017, works on training and sustaining the craft of Indian artisans in the field of Zardosi and Chikankari embroidery. Recognizing and promoting craft excellence, the Institute implements collaborations through engagement, education and exploration of tradition through transformative art in embroidery. The Institute runs an inbuilt artist residency that tends to narrow the divide of art and craft. During his residency in 2018, Baroda based artist T Venkanna collaborated with 14 Zardosi artisan graduates of the
Institute. The resulting ‘embroidered paintings’ compellingly blur the lines between artist and artisan, art and craft, painting and embroidery, challenging preconceived notions of classification.
18 October, 2017 - 19 February, 2018
Curated by Catherine David, Mémoires des futurs | Modernités indiennes sheds light on the highly varied contemporary aesthetic practices developed in India, illustrating widely differing views of not only the country's modern history and heritage, but also of formal genealogies and pluralistic memories that defy any project of essentialisation. The seven artists presented in the exhibition belong to two generations (from the early 1970s to the present day), and have very different careers and experiences. And yet, beyond their disparate backgrounds, cultural heritages and formal choices, they share memories of and concerns for a polemic modernity and the transformations, whether positive or more troubling, of a complex and often paradoxical society.
© Pablo Bartholomew
18 October, 2017 – 8 January, 2018
In a unique collaboration the Centre Pompidou and Castello di Rivoli are staging Indian artist Nalini Malani’s first retrospective in France and Italy. Presented in Paris in 2017-2018, then in Rivoli in 2018, this retrospective in two parts selectively covers fifty years of creativity. In the Centre Pompidou exhibition ‘The Rebellion of the Dead. Retrospective 1969-2018’, the artist presents works that tackle various concepts underlying her oeuvre, such as utopia, dystopia, her vision of India (in particular the result of Partition in 1947), female subjectivity and the profound condemnation of violence related to nationalism. Placing inherited iconographies and cherished cultural stereotypes under pressure, Nalini Malani’s artistic practice is unwaveringly urban and internationalist.
Image: All We Imagine as Light, 2016
11 October, 2017 – 2 January, 2018
Raghubir Singh (1942–1999) was a pioneer of color street photography who worked and published prolifically from the late 1960s until his death in 1999. Using a handheld camera and color slide film, he recorded India's dense milieu in complex frieze-like compositions teeming with incident, fractured by reflections, and pulsating with opulent color. This retrospective exhibition situates Singh's photographic work at the intersection of Western modernism and traditional South Asian modes of picturing the world. It features 85 photographs by Singh in counterpoint with works by his contemporaries—friends, collaborators, fellow travelers—as well as examples of the Indian court painting styles that inspired him.
Image: Pilgrim and Ambassador Car, Kumbh Mela, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, 1977 © Succession Raghubir Singh
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/raghubir-singh-photographs
30 September – 3 December, 2017
The Opening Up of the World is the first institutional solo presentation by Simryn Gill, a Malaysian national of Indian ancestry, in a northern European country. The title of the exhibition is taken from a textbook in political economy from 1936 by J. F. Horrabin, a Marxist geographer, well known in his time. The works on display articulate the experience of mapping and the mapping of experience. United by the concern of record-taking in its varied forms, they can be understood both figuratively, as the imprint that the world makes on the artist and that she conveys to us through her work, and literally, as when she makes prints directly from sprouting coconuts or run-over snakes.
20 September, 2017 – 10 September, 2018
Bharti Kher, 2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, was enriched and recharged by spending time thinking and living amongst the Museum’s extraordinary building and art treasures. The focus of this exhibition is a series of drawings and notebooks Bharti Kher made during that time. Charged with humor and a capriciousness that is smart and mischievous at the same time, the drawings investigate the enigmatic paradoxes of what it means to be human.
Image: Untitled, 2013
https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/exhibitions/sketchbooks-diaries
19 September, 2017 – 21 January, 2018
The Biennale Clouds⇆Forests, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, includes works of 52 artists from 24 countries. The exhibition focuses on a new eco-system formed through a circulation of ‘Cloud Tribes’, born on the Internet cloud space, and ‘Forest Tribes’, born on cultural origins. Siji Krishnan’s ‘Unknown Family Portrait’ draws on the tradition of family trees as a genealogical source as well as the Tree of Life. Painted on leafy rice paper, the tree – an explicit symbol of growth, seasonal death and revival – is an inherent part of folklore and local story telling. Rich in religious and mystic representations, it is a recurrent motif in Indian miniature painting where it evokes the idea of paradisal gardens in order to complement the painting’s narrative and cosmic composition.
https://moscowbiennale.art/article/729805983329313382/the-7th-moscow-biennale
29 May – 29 June, 2020
B V Doshi (born 1927) became the first Indian architect to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2018. His visionary work in the low-cost housing and urban planning sectors and his strong commitment to education are central to his humanist approach. Having worked with Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in the 1950s, he has developed a vocabulary of his own, combining modern principles with traditional Indian techniques. Influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings, Doshi developed new approaches to experimental housing based on the participation of prospective residents, enabling adaptation to changing needs and circumstances. His ideas of sustainability and the social, ecological and economic dimensions of architecture are highly topical.
Curated by Khushnu Panthaki Hoof
https://www.azw.at/en/event/balkrishna-doshi/
Image: ©Iwan Baan, 2018
19 September, 2017 – 18 January, 2018
The Biennale Clouds⇆Forests, curated by Yuko Hasegawa, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, includes works of 52 artists from 25 countries. The exhibition focuses on a new eco-system formed through a circulation of ‘Cloud Tribes’, born on the Internet cloud space, and ‘Forest Tribes’, born on cultural origins. The ongoing series Fields of Sight by one of India’s most celebrated photographers, Gauri Gill, stands out for its unique collaboration with the painter Rajesh Vangad of the Adivasi community, a minority in rural India. The landscape photographs by Gauri Gill, inscribed by drawings by Rajesh Vangad, create new visual narratives that symbiotically merge the language of an urban photographer and an artist from the tribal area, telling stories that demand to be heard as equally contemporary and relevant.
Image: Gods of the Home and Village from the series Fields of Sight, 2014/2015 © the artist
14 June – 8 October, 2017
Manish Nai’s first institutional exhibition in Europe is dedicated to the artist’s abiding interest in the abstract dimensions of form and volume through exploring the plastic potential of ‘poor’ materials. Investigating the textural and spatial possibilities of newspapers, old clothes, cardboard, mesh and jute, he is interested in how the process of making is intricately related to the end result, taking into account the vagaries of chance. While his practice is deeply inspired by his journeys through his hometown Bombay, its urban architecture and topography, his work resonates with the pictorial and sculptural legacies of modernist art.
10 June – 3 September, 2017
After a period of relative oblivion, the Ceylonese photographer Lionel Wendt (1900–1944) was rediscovered or better discovered – worldwide as a unique, individualistic photographer who availed himself of experimental techniques and modern compositions. Wendt’s choice of subjects was eclectic: from sensual and homo-erotic portraits to tropical images of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and from picturesque scenes to compositions for which he used modernist stylistic devices and experimental techniques. After Wendt’s premature death in 1944 his negatives were destroyed, but the work he left behind lives on. For the first time the large-scale retrospective at Huis Marseille brings together 140 prints from various international private collections, shinning a spotlight on the fascinating work of this photographer in all its facets.
Image: Untitled (Youth/Mezzo Forte), ca. 1933
8 April – 16 July, 2017
The Sri Lankan artist and polymath Lionel Wendt (1900-1944) is considered as one of Asia’s earliest and important modernist photographers. Almost completely forgotten for several decades, he was the pivotal figure of the ’43 Group, one of the most distinctive art movements in Asia. In matching international standards in photography, his works document and celebrate the sensitivity and tradition of Ceylon. His preoccupation with the male and female body resonates with local subjects, while adopting the vocabulary and legacy of modernism.
Image: Untitled (Suramba Druming), c. 1935
19 May – 17 September 17, 2017
On show are four works by Shilpa Gupta which examine the spoken word as being of great importance in sustaining faith. Her sound installation I Keep Falling at You investigates the power of language in the digital age. Resembling a vast, pod-shaped swarm of bees, thousands of microphones are suspended from the ceiling, from which a cacophony of whispering and singing sounds emanate.
Image: I Keep Falling at You, 2010
Pakistani artist Rashid Rana has been awarded the Asia Arts Award together with Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, Hong Kong artist Hon Chi Fun and Kimsooja from South Korea. Announced in Hong Kong in March 2017 by the Asia Society, the Asia Arts Award is a signature event celebrating artists for their significant contributions to contemporary Asian art and their role as distinctive voices on the global scene. Past honorees from India include Bharti Kher and Nalini Malani.
14 January – 14 March, 2017
The exhibition, curated by renowned Catherine David, brings together over 100 works, encompassing a time frame of almost 25 years. Ranging across various disciplines – from painting, photography and drawing to video and sculptural installations – the most comprehensive exhibition of Kallat’s works to date spans two buildings of the NGMA without following a linear chronological trail. Exploring the many processes, themes and ideas that reappear throughout Kallat’s artistic practice, the works are juxtaposed in previously unseen ways to enable new readings and reveal hidden relationships.
Vibha Galhotra is the recipient of the prestigious Asian Culture Council Award 2016-2017. The ACC works to advance international respect and understanding between people and cultures through transformative cultural exchange. The award is presented to an individual from Asia or the US who has made a significant contribution to the international practice or study of the visual or performing arts of Asia.
Image: Between Known and Unknown, 2011
1 October, 2016 – 22 January, 2017
The exhibition focuses on flows and movements of travelers, migrants, and labor across the world, producing major social and economic implications as well as new forms of cultural exchange. With technology and commerce blurring geographic boundaries, cultural identities are freed from a physical place. Reena Saini Kallat conceived ‘Woven Chronicles’ with electric wires to form a drawing that will trace migration patterns globally, where multitude of actors interact and are entwined in
a symbolic web.
Image: Woven Chronicle, 2015
https://medium.com/insecurities/woven-chronicle-e494ea66e782/ text: Reena Saini Kallat
12 December, 2016 – 29 March, 2017
The 3 th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, curated by Sudarshan Shetty, celebrates both contemporary art as well as the cultural legacy and history of Kochi. A total of 97 artists from 31 countries showcase their work across 12 venues spread over the city, including former warehouses, wharfs and factory buildings. Writers, dancers, poets, musicians and theatre professionals share the Biennale space alongside a host of visual artists.
© Kochi-Muziris Biennale / A J Joji
9 July – 10 October, 2016
Known as one of the most influential contemporary artists from India, BHARTI KHER Matter is the artist’s first major North American survey. It features the diversity of Bharti Kher’s practice, incorporating elements of painting, photography and sculpture that have been the hallmarks of her international career over the past two decades.
Image: Warrior with Cloak and Shield, 2008
http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_kher.html text: Vancouver Art Gallery Press Release popup:true)
Exploring the ephemeral nature of humanity, Yardena Kurulkar won the top award of the 64th Black Art Prize for her work Kenosis. She used 3D printing as a technology to acquire a life-size terracotta model of her own heart. Submerging the heart in water, an image was captured at regular intervals of disintegration. This led to a documented journey of the heart into nothingness in a series of fifteen selected images of framed time. The Blake Art Prize was founded in the 1950s and is still one of the most respected prizes in Australia. The Prize champions art that inspires debate about spirituality and religion, and the role of faith in history, personal life and community.
Image: Kenosis, 2015
21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016
For APT8, Asim Waqif has created the site-specific work All we leave behind are the memories, expanding through gallery spaces. In the lead-up to the exhibition, he visited Brisbane to explore the history of building and demolition in the city. His installation is constructed from the worn and aged timbers typical of vernacular south-east Queensland architecture. Embedded with lights and sound sensors to be triggered by the viewer, this precarious seeming structure is designed to be entered and explored. Concepts of waste, sustainability, heritage, and the contrast between the industrial and the handcrafted are important to his work.
https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/apt8/artists
5 February – 8 February, 2016
Shakuntala Kulkarni’s solo project consists of an immersive sculptural installation of five figures sculpted using traditional cane weaving practices prevalent in the Eastern part of South Asia. The sculptures are complemented by her newest video work Julus, a four channel video, where a procession of the multiple selves of the artist storms the space, addressing the timeless issue of how to exist as an individual in a world that encroaches on individual, and more specifically, Women’s rights. By placing her sculptural armours over her body, the artist dictates the viewer’s gaze, reclaiming power away from the viewer. She explores the tension of being protected and the notion of being trapped as a metaphor for female identity struggles.
© Jenni Carter
9 May – 22 November, 2015
The Great Game, curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Mazdak Faiznia, underpins the common historical, geographical, and political ties between Iranian artists and those from guest countries.
Riyas Komu’s Fragrance of a Funeral, an intricately carved sculpture resembling a stretcher, represents a classic poet and scholar from ancient Persia. By reversing the relief-like figure, one is confronted with the image of a contemporary political dissident from Iran in the process of being executed. The high civilization of an Empire known for its cultural riches and scholarship is contrasted by the political violence of an authoritative regime, exerting oppressive power to thwart dissent.
Image: Fragrance of a Funeral, 2010
https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/may/18/venice-biennale-iran-2015
9 May – 22 November, 2015
The Great Game, curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Mazdak Faiznia, underpins the common historical, geographical, and political ties between Iranian artists and those from guest countries.
T V Santosh’s sculpture Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays – a reworking of the tradition equestrian statue – features a headless rider in military uniform. Subverting the notion of centralized power by removing the head and replacing it with a fountain of blood, Santosh implies that the location of such statues, usually in a public square, is a place of contention. Timers on the sculpture indicate that politics of power, colonial repression and violence are reiterative and continuous.
Image: Effigies of Turbulent Yesterdays, 2011-2013
https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/may/18/venice-biennale-iran-2015
9 May – 22 November, 2015
Conceived by The Gujral Foundation the exhibition My East is Your West presents for the first time within the context of the Venice Biennale the conflicting South Asian nation-states of India and Pakistan as a singular region. The collaborative exhibition by internationally recognized artists Shilpa Gupta and Rashid Rana provides a unique platform to enter into a dialogue through the arts, proposing a shared cultural cartography.
Image: from the series ‘Untitled’, 2014-15, drawing and performance © Mark Blower
8 March – 13 September 2015
Curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, the exhibition explores the era following India’s 1947 independence, marked by the emergence of Indian modern art led by the Progressive Artists’ Group and their contemporaries. A half-century later, the year 1997 signaled the beginning of a new phase with Indian artists gaining sudden visibility in a newly globalized contemporary art world, while India experienced a surge of paradigm shifts including economic liberalization, political instability, and the growth of a religious right-wing. The exhibition presents the juxtaposition of these two historical periods in Indian art for the first time, ranging from Indian modern art from 1947 to the 1970s, and contemporary art from 1997 to the present.
Participating artists: CAMP, Nikhil Chopra, Desire Machine Collective, Atul Dodiya, Anita Dube, V.S. Gaitonde, Sheela Gowda, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, M.F. Husain, Tushar Joag, Jitish Kallat, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Prajakta Potnis, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Raqs Media Collective, S.H. Raza, Sharmila Samant, Mithu Sen, Dayanita Singh, F.N. Souza, Tallur L.N., Asim Waqif
27 January – 29 March, 2015
The retrospective, curated by Peter Nagy, brings together over ninety works created by Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949-2015) over the past four decades. The exhibition comes on the heels of the artist’s untimely demise, shortly after its opening. Described as ‘India’s pre-eminent sculptor, known for her fearless investigation of material’, she takes the natural world as starting point for her sculptures in hemp, ceramics and bronze. The works draw from the organic in terms of color, form and titles, stretching the frontiers of plastic arts in the most original and inventive ways. They evoke a sensuous quality with strong erotic undertones.
Bhuvanesh Gowda was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant based on artistic merit in the field of sculpture. The grant honours an outstanding artist whose work embodies high creative standards and exemplifies the impact of art on individuals and society.
1 October, 2014 - 1 October, 2015
Subodh Gupta's iconic sculpture This Side is the Other Side is currently on view at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam at the recently constructed Pavilion for Asian Art. The Pavilion displays ancient Hindu and Buddhist statues from South and Southeast Asia along with contemporary art from the region.
Image: This Side is the Other Side, 2001
11 December, 2014 – 10 February, 2015
The exhibition, curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, is a continuation of the museum’s curatorial series ‘Engaging Traditions’, which encourages contemporary artists to engage with the museum’s history, collection and archive. Atul Dodiya’s major artistic statement is comprised of a comprehensive body of works, ranging from oil paintings and watercolours to sculptural assemblages. They evoke a layered dialogue with the various conceptual frameworks from the museum’s collection, referencing defining moments in history of politics and art as well as the semantics of museums and museum displays.
The award was set up in 2008 to celebrate new developments in contemporary art. It is awarded each year to an artist for his / her outstanding lifetime achievement. Former prize-winners include Ai Weiwei (2013, China), Oscar Niemeyer (2012, Brazil), William Klein (2011, USA), Ilya & Emilia Kabakov (2010, Russia), Richard Long (2009, England), Robert Indiana (2008, USA).
© St. Moritz Art Masters 2014 / fotoswiss Giancarlo Cattaneo
6 September – 30 November, 2014
First held in 1999, the Triennale is held under a different theme every three years to showcase the most promising artists from across Asia. This year’s edition also commemorates the 15th anniversary of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. Panorama of the NextWorld: Breaking out into the Future features 46 artists from 21 countries and regions. Visualizing the NextWorld with their perspective of a future that is no longer inspired by a utopian world view, they offer a multi-faceted, deviant and endlessly expanding vision of potential realities.
Image: Divine Death, 2014
5 September – 9 November, 2014
Curated by Jessica Morgan, Daskolopoulos Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, London, Burning Down the House explores the process of burning and transformation, a cycle of obliteration and renewal witnessed throughout history. Evident in aesthetics, historical events, and an increasingly rapid course of redundancy and renewal in commercial culture, the Biennale reflects on this process of events of destruction or self-destruction by the promise of the new and the hope for change.
17 January – 16 March, 2014
Spanning across two buildings of the NGMA, the majestic Jaipur House dating back to 1936 and the modern wing of the museum, the biggest ever solo show by Bihar-born artist Subodh Gupta spills onto the lawns of the museum garden. Carefully curated by renowned Cermano Celant, this seminal mid-career retrospective showcases the artist’s oeuvre through decades from his earliest works of the late 1980’s to the most recent ones. Exploring a variety of themes through different materials, such as marble, thalis and dabbas in stainless steel, recycled aluminium, earthenware, bronze and cow dung, Gupta addresses the social transformation and baffling complexities of a nation in the throes of rapid change, subverting cultural stereotypes and iconographies.
Image: Ray, 2012