lundi 31 mars 2025
25 years ago, Saffronart founders Dinesh and Minal Vazirani set out to make Indian art more accessible. They succeeded
When Dinesh and Minal Vazirani co-founded Saffronart in 2000, they weren’t just building a digital auction platform, they were tapping into a quiet but decisive cultural shift. At a moment when Indian art remained under-recognised on the global stage, they envisioned a future shaped not by external endorsement but by internal conviction. With backgrounds in consulting and engineering, the couple represented a new kind of tastemaker—one fluent in both global systems and local histories. They met at a Thanksgiving dinner in San Francisco, a chance encounter that would eventually spark a romance as well as a shared vision for the future of Indian art. “People thought we were crazy,” Minal recalls. “Our own families thought we were a little bit, you know, silly to do this.”
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mercredi 19 mars 2025
9 artists break auction records at Sotheby’s South Asian sale.
“Breaking nine world records for multiple artists from across South Asia, the auction once again showcased the strength and depth of this category,” said Manjari Sihare Sutin, Sotheby’s specialist and co-worldwide head of modern and contemporary South Asian art. “Sotheby's is proud to be building and expanding the conversation beyond what the world considers blue-chip modern Indian art.” The headline sale was Indian artist Jagdish Swaminathan’s triptych Homage to Solzhenitsyn (1973), which sold for $4.68 million, far exceeding its estimate of $1 million–$2 million. The artist’s previous auction record was set in December 2024 at Bonhams for Untitled (1991), which sold for $987,600.
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The cycle of life in Manu Parekh's 'Flower Sutra' at Nature Morte
Parekh has been creating art since the 1970s and has engaged with religious themes across his career. His 2017 works such as The Last Supper and Image of Goddess—which references the Hindu goddess Durga—carry an overt religiosity. Meanwhile, his famous Banaras series, which began in the 1980s, captures the vibrancy of the holy city, mixing depictions of its temple architecture with Hindu symbolism, such as the delicate eyes associated with the divine figure Vishnu (who is known by some as Kamalnayan or ‘lotus-eyes’), and the Tripundra—a forehead marking with three horizontal lines—symbolising the deity Shiva’s command over wisdom, willpower and action. Many of the works at Nature Morte continue his fascination with the divine, though here he expresses this through his depictions of flowers. The gallery’s press release quotes the artist, stating, "Where there is faith, there will be the presence of flowers. Life, birth, marriage and death: flowers will be there. I have visited the Vatican, Ajmer, Nizamuddin Auliya's dargah, gurudwaras and Banaras. There were only two things common to all these places: faith and flowers."
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samedi 15 mars 2025
At 87, Arpita Singh Is Getting Her First Solo Show Outside of India.
Born in what is now the state of West Bengal in 1937, Singh didn’t foresee a life in the arts until her school principal nudged her along. “I didn’t know there was … a field called ‘art,’” she told Obrist. It wasn’t until her first year of college at Delhi Polytechnic that she visited an art museum, the National Gallery of Modern Art. Since emerging in the arts scene in the late 1960s, Singh has built a body of work that melds abstraction with traditional Indian court painting. The latter has a long history of blending the mythological and the quotidian, an enduring aspect of Singh’s work. “Remembering” spans large-scale oil paintings, intricate watercolors, and ink drawings. Her freedom of thought permeates the expansive show, in which recurring motifs—planes, fruits, and fragmented figures—evoke what Nietzsche described as the “eternal return,” a cyclical rhythm that feels at once personal and generationally universal. “I believe, then I doubt. I believe, and I doubt again,” Singh has said. “That’s the whole process of my work.”
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dimanche 9 mars 2025
Crafts & Conversations: Swadesh celebrates accomplished women artisans
Source The New Indian Express by Nitika Krishna
The energies in the room were indescribably powerful — we listened intently as they told us about their lives and the crafts they were so passionate about. On International Women’s Day, six accomplished women artisans graced the dais at the Swadesh store in Jubilee Hills for 'Crafts & Conversations - Celebrating the Women Champions of Craft and Creative Traditions'. Moderated by Tanya Chaitanya, CEO and editor-in-chief, Her Circle (Digital & Diversity, Reliance), the conversation was heartwarmingly insightful. Sunetra Lahiri, a national award recipient for design innovation in aari and zardosi, spoke about how these embroidery forms are integral to the industry. The designer from West Bengal said her inspirations were Maa Durga and Maa Kali. "I am also an environmentalist; one of my works is 'Chlorophyll'. The idea is simple: We abuse this planet. But to take revenge, it doesn't have to do much," she noted. Claps reverberated as she underscored our duty to the planet.
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jeudi 6 mars 2025
11 new art shows in India we’re excited about this March
French photojournalist Marc Riboud was one of the most celebrated lensmen of the 20th century, having clicked several historical and political events of his era. This retrospective exhibition presents Riboud’s powerful images of the refugee crisis that unfolded after the Bangladeshi Liberation War in and around Calcutta in 1971. Featuring over 43 hard-hitting photographs ranging from the Battle of Jamalpur to the fall of Dhaka, the aftermath of the War and Kolkata as a centre of refuge, the showcase gives viewers a humanitarian, intimate glimpse of a time of great upheaval, while also presenting images emanating hope and resilience—a true testament to Riboud’s mastery with his camera.
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jeudi 20 février 2025
Mumbai on my mind: six Indian star creatives on the city they love
In the 16th century, intrepid Portuguese cartographers marked seven islands on the western coast of India as the Ilhas de Bom Baim. In 1668, traders of the East India Company started leasing these islands from King Charles I of England and called the territory Bombay. A series of frenetic land reclamation projects ensued under British colonial rule, and the fishing islands slowly coalesced into a city. Meanwhile, booming mercantile wealth drew thousands of diverse people to this new port to build their lives. A coastal metropolis was born: Mumbai.
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mercredi 19 février 2025
‘The Way Home’: Subodh Gupta’s homecoming at Bihar Museum
The artist has delighted visitors from his beloved state. They are astounded by the kinetic sculptures he has brought to the museum, his architectural installations including his famous Ambassador car and his shiny Bullet motorbikes (so commonly seen on Patna streets and alleys) that even have milk pails slung as if the doodhwala is about to set off on his morning rounds to make deliveries. So strongly do the works resonate with the milieu that the thali containing ‘dough’ neatly covered with a red-and-white checked ‘cloth’ created from fibre glass becomes an object of great curiosity with visitors. They try to touch the dough to see if it is really the atta they make rotis with, causing consternation and amusement with the security guard.
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When art gets intimate
By the 1970s, the Women’s Liberation Movement led to a sexual revolution where the male gaze in art was challenged and women artists altered the narrative of erotic art by using their own nude bodies to express desire. In contemporary times too, artists do not shy away from eroticism. Indian artist T Venkanna’s graphic depictions of sexuality and eroticism have many takers. Art has always been a means to express the varied emotions that make up human existence and lustfulness has always been a defining one. Moral watchdogs may find it worthy of boycotts and bans, but it is worthwhile to remember that art history proves that vulgarity lies in the mind of the beholder.
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dimanche 16 février 2025
Inside India’s contemporary art scene
To perceive depth, a shadow must be cast. To cast a shadow, light must be obstructed. And to obstruct light, an object must resist – holding onto opacity, refusing to dissolve under a glare. The white cube, designed to absorb as little resistance as possible, perpetuates a lie: a deceptive tabula rasa. Its sterile walls strip art of context, pretending neutrality while enforcing erasure. This was apparent at the recent India Art Fair 2025 at the NSIC grounds in New Delhi, which offered an array of these white cubes, where 120 exhibitors transformed their enclosed grids into storefronts-disguised-as-galleries.
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lundi 10 février 2025
Arpita Singh’s work gets its first solo retrospective in London’s Serpetine
“We first encountered Singh’s work during the research for the 2008/2009 exhibition Indian Highway,” says Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine. “It is an honour to present London’s first solo institutional exhibition on her prolific body of work which spans more than half a century”. This landmark exhibition seeks to build on the Serpentine’s legacy of spotlighting trailblazing artists yet to receive global recognition for their work. Through this exhibition, Singh joins an illustrious club that include the likes of Faith Ringgold, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, and Barbara Chase-Riboud.
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vendredi 7 février 2025
The Largest India Art Fair Yet Reflects Growing Enthusiasm for Indian Artists
Source Artsy by Arun Kakar
If the health of a country’s art market can be judged by the size of its largest art fair, then the 2025 edition of India Art Fair (IAF) makes for a buoyant barometer. This year’s fair, the 16th iteration, is the largest yet, hosting a record 120 exhibiting galleries and institutions (compared to 108 last year) at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds in Okhla, New Delhi. As VIP day unfolded on a balmy Thursday afternoon, excitement was tangible among a crowd of varied ages and demographics that continued to flow well past the fair’s 11 a.m. opening. The buzzing atmosphere was due in no small part to the upward trajectory of the Indian art market in recent years—one of the most consistent green shoots we’ve witnessed during a period of uncertainty. Indian artists experienced the strongest surge in demand among nationalities on Artsy last year, and much of this spike can be attributed to the country’s growing domestic and diasporic collector bases, buffeted by the rising international profile for its leading artists. At this year’s IAF, there is a sense that this momentum is not only being maintained but expanded, too.
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This Year’s India Art Fair Proves Local Collectors Show No Sign of Slowing Down
For its 16th edition, the India Art Fair in New Delhi clamped down on the number of invites it extended for its ultra-VIP preview, from 11 am to 3 pm on Thursday. This attempt to avoid the overwhelming rush witnessed at last year’s edition was forgotten just minutes after the clock struck 3, the tent becoming overcrowded. The buzz all day seem optimistic, a sign of India’s maturation of a leading art market hub. The day’s clear blue sky, in a city that tends to be smoggy, seemed especially a good omen for commerce.
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lundi 20 janvier 2025
A New Equation For War, Death And Democracy
Democracy was invented in history to tame power, force and violence. It was a way of questioning the natural superiority of individuals or collectives based on race, faith, gender, or ethnicity. It was said: ‘democracy denatures power’. Above all, democracy was imagined as an antonym of violence. This optimism was true even at the end of the 20th century after Fascism stood defeated. But at the turn of the 21st century, not only are democracies seemingly dying but they are also erupting into mass violence and death. Much of the violence is happening not against, but in the name of democracies. Today’s mass violence is a way of actualising the ‘general will’ of the majority. The principle of majority has collapsed into majoritarianism, and democracies that came about to tame power look domesticated and helpless. Death and democracy have a new equivalence that has escaped conventional political explanations. Today, there is a renewed need to explain the political through the lens of death.
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jeudi 9 janvier 2025
Arpita Singh: Remembering at Serpentine North
The exhibition at Serpentine North features a range of Singh’s works, from large-scale oil paintings to intimate watercolours and ink drawings. These pieces reflect her exploration of themes such as gender, motherhood, feminine sensuality, and vulnerability, alongside metaphorical representations of violence and political unrest in India and beyond. Singh’s art resists singular interpretation, inviting viewers to engage with her work on multiple levels. “Remembering” builds upon Serpentine’s legacy of showcasing pioneering artists who have yet to receive due recognition in London. This exhibition follows in the footsteps of successful presentations featuring artists like Faith Ringgold, Luchita Hurtado, and James Barnor. To complement the exhibition, Serpentine will publish a comprehensive catalogue, featuring contributions from key authors, thinkers, and creatives who will illuminate Singh’s significant role in the contemporary art landscape.
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samedi 4 janvier 2025
Bengal Biennale Nov 29, 2024 - January 5, 2025
In Bengali, ‘Anka’ signifies both the act of drawing and the drawing itself. It is when thought becomes visible, and the hand traces the contours of imagination. ‘Banka,’ on the other hand, speaks of something aslant, indirect. It suggests a deviation, a path that meanders rather than rushes straight ahead. The phrase ‘Anka-Banka’ conjures the image of a winding river or a serpentine path, forever shifting. It is an apt metaphor for life and art, where the journey is often more significant than the destination, where meaning is found in the curves and bends rather than in a straight line. This edition of the Biennale embraces this very spirit with a contemporary outlook. It embodies the idea of always finding a way, of moving forward through twists and turns and celebrating the vitality that emerges from such movement. Here, in this gathering of artists and their works and installations, we witness the spirit of ‘Anka-Banka,’ the relentless pursuit of expression marked in the journey.
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Art across arenas
Art biennales, beginning 130 years ago in Venice in 1895, are, today, global cultural showcases, bringing together contemporary artists to display innovative works and foster artistic dialogue and creativity. The first edition of the Bengal Biennale: Anka Banka — Through Cross-Currents, which is unfolding across at least 27 venues spread out through Calcutta and Santiniketan, is no different. The overwhelming message of the Bengal Biennale is perhaps this: art should be accessible to everyone, not limited to galleries. It needs to be seen and experienced in everyday life. Take, for instance, Paresh Maity’s giant jackfruit installation, which sat squat outside Victoria Memorial Hall and bewildered unsuspecting visitors (one of whom marvelled about whether it might have been the favourite fruit of Queen Victoria). Inside the hall, Robert Clive proudly guarded a nakshi kantha of tales from the Ramayana, while visitors tried to decipher the chiaroscuro of Jorasanko’s interiors as seen in Gaganendranath Tagore’s cubist works, displayed alongside the most magnificent watercolours of the Arabian Nights by Abanindranath Tagore.
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jeudi 26 décembre 2024
Designer Mohanjeet Grewal her journey from bohemian chic to fashion icon in Paris
Wearing a block-printed shirt with floral printed pants and a scarf fashioned into a head wrap, German-French actor Romy Schneider sat at a table, smoking, as Helmut Newton photographed her for Marie Claire. In 1972, everything about Schneider’s bohemian chic style was straight out of the Swinging Sixties, as if she’d just returned from a Jimi Hendrix concert. Schneider was dressed by Paris-based Indian designer Mohanjeet Grewal, who had set up shop on the Left Bank, eight years ago. Now almost 60 years later, Grewal’s hair is dyed platinum blonde, and she laughs recalling her faith in herself as a young designer—the first Indian dressmaker in Paris. “I was so foolish,” she exclaims. ‘I thought I could be successful!” Little over two decades before Grewal set up her shop in Paris, World War II had torn through the country, in the aftermath of which Dior came up with his structured female silhouette, that unravelled in the Mod era. That was exactly when Grewal entered fashion. “At that time, French women were still going to their tailors and couture houses,” she recalls. “The ready-to-wear market was just opening up.” She arrived with her khadi shirts and khari prints, which were immediately swooped up for magazine editorial spreads, and by actors like Romain Gary and Jean Seberg, who lived right opposite her store. “They were coming all the time,” she says. “They loved me.”
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jeudi 28 novembre 2024
India Art Fair 2023: Debashish Paul ’s sculptural dresses reflect his inner worlds
Source Mint by Avantika Bhuyan
There is a sense of the spiritual in Debashish Paul’s performance. As he walks around the NSIC Grounds, Okhla—venue of the 2023 edition of the India Art Fair—in a sculptural dress, wearing a headgear of matkas, it feels like he is exploring his queer identity with every movement and folding of the fluid textile forms. He attributes this spiritual element to a childhood spent in Phulia village, located within West Bengal’s Nadia district. “Nadia is where Chaitanya Maha prabhu spread his message of bhakti and prem. While growing up, I both watched and participated in kirtans, jatra and putul naach, a performing style with dolls,” says Paul, who is now based in Varanasi—he moved to the city for his masters degree in sculpture at the Banaras Hindu University in 2019.
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lundi 25 novembre 2024
Gallery Espace celebrates 35 years with multiple exhibitions
In the 35 years since its inception, Gallery Espace in Delhi has become a veritable institution in the arts space through its promotion of Indian contemporary art. Hence, the celebrations for achieving this milestone are bound to be grand, with four different exhibitions being organised over the winter season. Founded by Renu Modi in 1989, the focus of this gallery has always been on promoting emerging and well-established artists in the contemporary sphere. Over the years, they have organised many exhibitions of note. In the 1990s, there was Drawing ’94, Sculpture ’95, Miniprint ’96, and ‘The Self and The World’ (1997), which brought together 16 Indian women artists from Amrita Sher-Gil to Anjolie Ela Menon. In later years, the gallery began promoting fresh talent and experimental art practices with exhibitions like ‘Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai’ (2001), an exposition of pop and kitsch in contemporary art; ‘Leela’ (2003), which grew out of a residency featuring Bhupen Khakar, Amit Ambalal, Atul and Anju Dodiya in Haridwar; ‘Lo Real Maravilloso’ (2009), an overview of magic realism in art, and two editions of ‘Video Wednesday’ (2008-09 and 2011-12), dedicated to video art.
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mercredi 20 novembre 2024
Artist Nikhil Chopra and his team HH Art Spaces will curate Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025
The sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), which is to be held from December 2025 to March 2026, will be curated by artist Nikhil Chopra and his team HH Art Spaces. The announcement was made by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram on November 20. “KMB 2025 is poised to be one of the most memorable editions of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Let us join together to celebrate this spectacular event that fosters the spirit of art, community and dialogue,” said Vijayan. Welcoming Chopra, KMB president Bose Krishnamachari said, “Known for his evocative and immersive work, Nikhil’s collaboration with the KBF will undoubtedly bring in a fresh and dynamic perspective to the biennale, delivering an experience, and promises to resonate deeply with the visitors, both from Kerala and around the world.”
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samedi 16 novembre 2024
Serpentine announce 2025 exhibition highlights
Serpentine has announced hightlights from their 2025 exhibition program. Solo exhibitions of Arpita Singh, Giuseppe Penone and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley will be presented in the galleries. Next year will also mark a quarter century since Serpentine’s ambitious annual Pavilion commission began with Dame Zaha Hadid’s inaugural structure in Hyde Park in 2000. “We are honoured to kickstart 2025 with London’s first institutional exhibition by Arpita Singh, who for more than half a century has produced a prolific body of work as one of India’s most singular painters and whom we first encountered during the research for the 2007 exhibition at Serpentine South titled Indian Highway. Through a practice that blends Bengali folk art with modernist explorations of identity, Singh vividly portrays scenes of life and imagination, stories, and symbols, uniting the personal and the universal. This landmark exhibition builds on Serpentine’s legacy of spotlighting trailblazing artists yet to receive global recognition for their work, like Luchita Hurtado, Faith Ringgold, Hervé Télémaque, James Barnor, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, and Barbara Chase-Riboud.” Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director
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mercredi 13 novembre 2024
‘Ulcerous wounds, skin and bones’: How Chittaprosad’s searing sketches chronicled the Bengal famine
Weaponised against this censorial attitude, Chittaprosad’s famine drawings must be credited to have practically invented a language appropriate for speaking of an otherwise “unspeakable event” that is, the famine and the resultant experiences of refugeehood, which were, according to many scholarly accounts, contrived by the British imperial policies. Among other things, such traumatic experiences challenge the discursive limits of representation. Both the colonial administration and the bourgeoisie art world maintained certain reservations about their depiction. Thinking in these terms, the famine drawings function as an important vector between experiences of refugeehood, institutional censorship, the grammar of representation and the ethics of spectatorship. It is necessary for me to add that, in delineating Chittaprosad’s famine drawings as iconoclastic, I am speaking principally as a scholar of mobility; and I must insist that readers note the subtitle of Chittaprosad’s Hungry Bengal: “a Tour through Midnapur District” [italics mine]. Of significance here is to consider how, in this context, Chittaprosad himself embodied the “travelling artist” – a figure that stands in contrast to the imagery of the salon painter – working from outside of the studio set-up and making his sketches and journal entries always on the move.
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vendredi 8 novembre 2024
Subodh Gupta’s artistic homecoming with a solo show at the Bihar Museum
Subodh Gupta, one of India’s most internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, returns to his roots with ‘The Way Home’, a major solo exhibition opening at the Bihar Museum in Patna this November. In an exclusive interview with Lifestyle Asia, Gupta reflects on the significance of returning to Bihar, his birth state, and how his work has evolved in conversation with his personal experiences and India’s broader cultural shifts. Subodh Gupta’s works are particularly resonant in the context of the Bihar Museum — a place where traditional heritage and contemporary culture converge. Designed under the tutelage of architect, Kenzo Tange, the Bihar Museum offers a setting that is both deeply rooted in the the region’s history and forward-looking in its embrace of contemporary art. Inaugurated in 2015, it houses a vast collection of ancient artefacts, particularly from the Maurya and Gupta periods, as well as more recent Buddhist relics. These historical works, alongside folk and modern art exhibitions, set the stage for a dynamic conversation between the ancient and the contemporary, the sacred and the everyday. This dialogue is central to Subodh Gupta’s practice, making the Bihar Museum the perfect venue for his exhibition.
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samedi 2 novembre 2024
The rebel painter who ushered in a new era of Indian art
Some artists become legends in their lifetime yet remain a mystery years after their death. Indian painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, born 100 years ago on 2 November 1924, was one such master. Considered one of South Asia's greatest abstract painters, Gaitonde was part of a rebellious generation of artists who laid the foundation for a new era of Indian art in the mid-20th Century. He was deeply inspired by the techniques used by Western painters but his work remained rooted in Asian philosophy, infusing light and texture in ways that, admirers say, evokes a profound sense of calmness. His paintings were meant to be "meditations on the light and universe", says Yamini Mehta, who worked as the international head of South Asian Art at Sotheby’s. "The play of light and shadows and texture makes these paintings dynamic." In a career that spanned decades, Gaitonde never pursued fame or fortune. But his works continue to grab attention at auctions, years after his death in 2001. In 2022, an untitled oil painting by him fetched 420m rupees (nearly $5m; £3.9m), setting a new record for Indian art at that time. The bluish shades of the work reminded viewers of large expanses of the sea or sky. Gaitonde lived as a recluse for most of his life. He was deeply impacted by Japanese Zen philosophy and this meditative mindset was often reflected in his paintings. “Everything starts from silence. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife. The painter starts by absorbing all these silences… Your entire being is working together with the brush, the painting knife, the canvas to absorb that silence and create,” he told journalist Pritish Nandy in a rare interview in 1991.
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