India Re-Worlded: Art and Politics
VIEW EVENT DETAILSSometimes we perceive and receive the meanings of art through a consideration of the inner workings of an artists’ mind. Often these go beyond personal and subjective experience to a more collective, outward and political existence. How does a contemporary artist express these ideologies through their work? Is it always a strong overt public concern or can it be an artist's expression of perhaps a perplexity - seeing their city destroyed in the name of development or a personal struggle with loss? Art, with the power to move nations and people, has played a central and decisive role in the formation and success of political events around the world, especially in India. Whether it was the Folk Art Movement of pre-independent India or the Progressive Artists' movement of modern India - identity, politics, and political ideology have played a central role in the development of art. Considering 70 years of history since India’s Independence, how do artists express concern or bemusement with social, cultural, or economic affairs across time? Four contemporary artists, Jitish Kallat, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Mithu Sen, and Justin Ponmany, who examine subjects such as feminism, urbanization, globalization, epistemologies, and security as focuses of their practices, will present their artistic approaches to historical events and current social dynamics. In light of their participation in the exhibition, India Re-Worlded: Seventy Years of Investigating a Nation, the panel moderated by Curator Arshiya Lokhandwala will traverse individual artist strategies used to creatively consider political and domestic issues through time.
Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala is an art historian [Ph. D. Cornell University], curator and founding director/curator of Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai. Her recent museum curatorial projects include India Re- Worlded: Seventy Years of Investigating a Nation [ 2017] at Gallery Odyssey, Mumbai. After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947/1997 [2015] at the Queens Museum, and Of Gods and Goddesses, Cinema. Cricket: The New Cultural Icons of India for the RPG foundation in Mumbai, and Against All Odds: A Contemporary Response to the Historiography of Archiving Collecting, and Museums in India at the Lalit Kala Academy, in Delhi in 2011. She has curated over 100 shows at Lakeeren Gallery, which include an international program of excellence including artists from India, Pakistan, Iran, Germany & Mexico City. Dr Lokhandwala writes on globalization, feminism, performance and new media with a specialization in biennale and large-scale exhibitions.
Jitish Kallat (b. 1974) was born in Mumbai, the city where he continues to live and work. Kallat’s works over the last two-decades reveal his continued engagement with the ideas of time, sustenance, recursion and historical recall often interlacing the dense cosmopolis and the distant cosmos. His works move interchangeably between meditations on the self, the city-street, the nation and the cosmic horizon. Kallat has exhibited widely at museums and institutions including: Tate Modern (London), Martin Gorpius Bau (Berlin), Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Palais de Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Hangar Bicocca (Milan), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo), Institut Valencia d’ArtModern (Spain), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Jean Tinguley Museum (Basel) and the Gemeente Museum (The Hague) amongst many others. Kallat’s work has been part of the Havana Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennale, Curitiba Biennale, Guangzhou Triennale and the Kiev Biennale amongst others. Jitish Kallat was the curator and artistic director of Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014.
Shakuntala Kulkarni (b. 1950) is a Mumbai based, Karnataka born multidisciplinary artist who was trained at the Sir JJ School ofArt, MSU Baroda, as well as Santiniketan under Somnath Hore. Originally trained in mural painting, Kulkarni’s work continued in the vein of addressing large audiences, but shifted from flat surfaces into sculpture, performance, and new media. Her work is primarily concerned with the plights of urban women who are held back by traditional patriarchal constraints, capturing the wounds and anxiety that come from those constraints. She has participated in several exhibitions held by the Lalit Kala Akademi, Bharat Bhavan, Chemould Prescott Road, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Jahangir Art Gallery, Gallery Sumukha, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Dhaka Art Summit and Vadhera Art Gallery.
Justin Ponmany (b. 1974) received his B.F.A. in painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay. Ponmany accosts the human sensorium, riddling it with materiality, arid humour and alchemy to consider deeper questions. In the early 2000’s, he espoused an ‘analogue interactive’ that bypasses sensors or clicks, exploring optics and lens based phenomena. Ponmany has since worked with myriad quotidian material, namely security holograms, that pervade currency and merchandise, examining the perpetration of ‘value’. They ask questions of the veracity of vantage points or viewing positions, and is not shy to ask of art; what is a photo or a drawing? or to whom it may belong? The following decade this trajectory has witnessed a widening public interface, seeking realms on the fringes of the aegis of white cube indoctrinations. He has worked in both public spaces and private and has collaborated with Alt Space Loop (Seoul) KHOJ (Delhi), Kadist Art Foundation (Paris) Mumbai Art Room, Clark House (Mumbai), Kunst Museum (Bern), Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju), ZKM Museum (Karlsruhe), Kochi Muziris Biennale among others to realise his works.
Mithu Sen (b. 1971) lives and works in New Delhi. She completed her BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, India; and a PG Programme from the Glasgow School of Art 2000-2001, UK. Her practice manifests human interactions and questions pre-codified hierarchies that define social performance of roles through radical hospitality, lingual anarchy, counter capitalism, untaboo sexuality and unmonolith identity. She has exhibited and performed widely at museums, institutions, galleries and biennales including: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016); TATE Modern, London (2013); Queens Museum, New York (2015); Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, USA (2014); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (2017); Palais De Tokyo, Paris (2015); Art Unlimited, Basel (2016); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2015); Kochi Muziris Biennale, India (2014); DhakaArt Summit (2014); Bozar Museum, Brussels (2013); Nature Morte, New Delhi and Berlin (2012, 2010, 2007, 2006); Chemould Prescott Road (2011), 18th Street Art Center, Los Angeles (2017), and others.
In association with Mumbai Gallery Weekend.
Ecosystem Partner: Indian School of Design & Innovation (ISDI)
Event Details
Registration at 7:00 PM
Indian School of Design & Innovation (ISDI)
Colab Room, Floor 7
One Indiabulls Centre, Tower 2A
Senapati Bapat Marg
Lower Parel, 400012
Please RSVP to: [email protected]