What I Buy and Why: Collector Kiran Nadar on Championing Indian Artists on the Global Stage

Source Artnet News by Eileen Kinsella
Kiran Nadar has become a central force in India’s cultural landscape. In 2010, she founded the private nonprofit Kiran Nadar Museum of Art to house her collection of more than 8,000 works of Modern and contemporary Indian art. With branches in both Delhi and Noida, Nadar sees the museum as a way to ensure wide accessibility to the collection and foster a museum-going culture among younger Indians. Beyond India, Nadar has forged collaborations on a global scale with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Musee Guimet, the India Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Reina Sofia, and the Sharjah Foundation. She has supported Indian artists including Jayshree Chakravarty, Nasreen Mohamedi, Nalini Malani, and Bhupen Kkakhar. When she’s not promoting the arts at home and abroad, Nadar also happens to be an internationally renowned bridge player. We caught up with Nadar at her home in Delhi, where she lives with her husband, Shiv Nadar.
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India at 75 | Timeline: Art

Source Frontline The Hindu by Anupama Katakam

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Bangalore’s Newest Museum, Home to a 60,000-Object Collection of South Asian Visual Culture, Will Open in December

Source Artnews by Vittoria Benzine
Abhishek Poddar donated foundational works for MAP’s collection, which now tops 60,000 works following further contributions from the Deepak Puri Collection, the private collection of Rahul Sabhnani, and original commissions. Altogether, the collection bridge historical periods and creative approaches from painting and sculpture to textiles, tribal art, and memorabilia from India’s globally renowned Bollywood Industry. The variety “deliberately blurs the boundaries between what is regarded as high art and the everyday creativity of the region’s communities,” the museum said. “The photography collection is one of the most extensive in India with a particular focus on the period from the mid-19th century, a turning point in the history of Britain’s colonial relationship with the region, right up to the present day,” the museum added.
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Anju Dodiya’s new London exhibition brings together her pandemic-inspired body of work

Souce Artchitectural Digest India by Uma nair
In the heart of London’s Mayfair, on the ground floor of Frieze’s space at No. 9 Cork Street, the Vadehra Art Gallery unveils Anju Dodiya’s solo with the enigmatic title “Anatomy of a Flame”. Londoners are savouring her painted mattresses, watercolours along with photo-collage works painted during the pandemic. Running from 1 June to 18 June, it cements her place as an artist of depth as she creates in the oyster of her own solitude. Currently in London, Dodiya talks to AD India about her show.
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Art Basel 2022: Everything you need to know about the 3 Indian galleries showing at the fair

Source Vogue India by Avantika Shankar
The art world is set to convene in Switzerland this week as Art Basel 2022 restores the fair's scale to its pre-pandemic glory. Indian contemporary art makes a bold appearance, brought to the fore by Kolkata’s Experimenter gallery, New Delhi’s Vadehra Art and Mumbai’s Chemould Prescott Road. Through photography, sculpture and experimental mixed-media works, the artworks offer a glimpse into the extensive range of diverse cultural experiences that populate the Indian landscape today.
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Pushpa Kumari is one of India’s foremost contemporary traditional artists

Source Biennale of Sydney 2022
Pushpa Kumari is one of India’s foremost contemporary traditional artists and divides her time between Delhi and her ancestral village of Ranti. Her artistic roots are deep within the Mithila/Madhubani folk art tradition, and she learned this art as a young child from her grandmother, the renowned artist Mahasundari Devi. Mithila or Madhubani art is one of India’s most popular folk art genres from the Indian state of Bihar. Kumari incorporates in her art the stylistic devices and signature elements of Madhubani art. She imbues her works with strong personal statements and compelling pre-occupations. They are often concerned with women’s issues and the immense ecological challenges facing humankind in the twenty-first century. Kumari both strengthens and subverts the tradition, using it as a medium for her message which can be both overt and subtle, lending a beguiling charm to her intricate black and white and colourful drawings.
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Brush of freedom: Editorial on culture of vigilantism in arts

Source The Telegraph by The Editorial Board
Art for art’s sake — the idea that art needs no justification and need not serve a political, didactic or economic purpose — is a principle that must be re-examined. There is the longstanding argument that for the market of art and, indeed, artists to prosper, their works should stay aloof from addressing difficult — political — questions. That art, in other words, should serve as a means of escaping reality to remain profitable. This may not be the case always. For instance, the 2022 edition of the India Art Fair brought together young artists who boldly tackled, in a myriad media, questions related to politics, gender and sexuality, caste, class, mental health, the climate crisis and so on and, yet, managed to achieve commercial success. The fair broke records with galleries selling works across price points — the sign of a thriving and lucrative art scene. Hearteningly, the artworks were also representative of diversity: they came from the interior corners of India, spanning Santiniketan in West Bengal to Vadodara in Gujarat to international cities such as Sydney, Brasília, New York, and London and were bought by patrons across the world.
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‘The Project of Independence’ at MoMA spotlight South Asia's modernist structures post-independence

Source Vogue India by Sadaf Shaikh
How does a country reclaim its identity after being colonised for close to two centuries? For India, as well as other emancipated South Asian nations that won independence from the British Raj between 1947 and 1971, the principal solution lay in reinventing the infrastructure, a stark reminder of the hegemonic institutions that had ruled them with an iron fist for so long. The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985, an assiduously curated collection of about 200 archival and commissioned works by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, spotlights the firm mood of nation-building that gripped the countries emerging from a protracted imperialist regime.
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In the Studio With Mahesh Baliga

Source Ocula by Cleo Roberts-Komireddi
Mahesh Baliga's small-scale paintings in casein tempera are like pages from a story book. In vivid colour, Baliga renders scenes from his surroundings in Vadodara, India, transforming otherwise overlooked details into visual poetry. On the occasion of his first solo exhibition outside of India, Drawn to remember at David Zwirner in London, the artist—whose work was also recently presented by Project 88 at India Art Fair—shares how he arrived at his unique style.. "The initial starting point of any work is the pain. It starts with the self and what I've seen. Looking at those lights, I know that that building is incomplete. I know that so many people around it have lost their jobs. There's an undercurrent. It's like Satyajit Ray's films, there is so much sadness but they're entertaining... I'm working in a similar way."
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The Kochi-Muziris Biennale launches new award to boost opportunities for younger artists

Source Architectural Digest India by Shaikh Ayaz
In a step that Bose Krishnamachari, President, Kochi Biennale Foundation and Biennale director, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, proudly calls yet another "feather in our cap," the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) 2022-23 has just announced a unique tie-up with the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF) and London's Hayward Gallery to institute an award for up-and-coming South Asian artists. The first recipient of the multi-year DBF-KMB award will be chosen from an array of emerging artists of South Asian descent participating in the fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and will be announced shortly after the official opening on 12 December later this year in Kochi, Kerala. Subsequently, the awardee will be invited by the Hayward Gallery to exhibit their first institutional solo show at its HENI Project Space in London’s Southbank Centre.
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Madhubani in Manhattan

Source The New Indian Express by Tanisha Saxena
at the bus shelter on Manhattan’s 86 street, right between the Broadway and West End Avenue, is exhibited a unique and unexpected work of art. Unexpected because it is not a work by a celebrated impressionist or an avant-garde contemporary artist as one would expect it to be in the heart of New York City. Instead, it is the work of Pushpa Kumari, a third-generation Madhubani artist from a small town in Bihar. Titled ‘Joy of Living’, the painting is a nuanced representation of hope, particularly in light of the last two years that were taken over by the fear of the pandemic. Kumari’s work is being exhibited as part of Global Positioning, an art show by the Public Art Fund, a non-profit in the United States of America. Madhubani or Mithila is an age-old Indian art form. Often characterised by complex geometrical patterns, these paintings have traditionally been depictions of religious rituals. But Kumari uses the intricacy of this timeless folk art to address issues of the current times. read more

'Painted villages' Reviving Hazaribagh's traditional tribal art resembling ancient cave paintings

Source News9Live by Hiren Kumar Bose
This art was fading away until a chance finding of a similar ancient cave painting. Now the art not only has international recognition, but is being documented and fused with modern design thanks to art conservators Justin and Alka Imam. Searching for the lost art and its artists Accompanying his father to rock shelter sites and helping him in his research on Hazaribagh's folk arts, Justin Imam naturally got interested in heritage. Justin and Alka Imam took it upon themselves to revive the prehistoric Khovar and Sohrai arts (Photo credit: Justin Imam) As there were only a few women continuing the Khovar and Sohrai painting tradition, Justin decided to help them revive the art. When he got married, his wife Alka too joined him. "In the early years we'd load our car with earth colours and scour the villages to identify women still practising the arts. We'd gift them the colours and motivate them to keep their art alive," Alka Imam told Village Square.
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India Art Fair 2022: In Photos

Source Ocula
Taking place annually in India's capital, New Delhi, view highlights of India Art Fair's 13th edition of modern and contemporary art from South Asia.
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Venice Post-Mortem: Reflections on The Milk of Dreams*

Source Ocula by Stephanie Bailey
There are too many great artists and works to name. Like masters Safia Farhat, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Pinaree Sanpitak, and Tishan Hsu.Or young guns Carolyn Lazard, Sandra Mujinga, Hannah Levy, and Elisa Giardina Papa, whose 2022 video installation "U Scantu": A Disorderly Tale, turns the Sicilian myth of hybrid women into a Mad-Max revenge fantasy where girls on bikes rule.
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Despite a Heat Wave, Crowds Returned in Full Force to the India Art Fair and Collectors Bought Up Work Quickly

Source Artnet News by Skye Arundhati Thomas
“Watch out, it can be addictive,” states the opening paragraph of How to buy your first piece at India Art Fair, an online guide for new collectors. And on the fair’s opening day last week, eager art buyers showed just how much of a compulsion collecting can be, arriving in force despite record temperatures in New Delhi and a new wave of the pandemic looming. During the VIP preview on Thursday, rows of orderly, plush cars patiently waited to reach the fair entrance and the white tents were packed with crowds.
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‘A turning point’: Indian art fair challenges gender and sexual stereotypes

Source The Guardian by Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Even through the haze of shimmering heat and thick Delhi dust, the mural is impossible to miss. Pinks, blues, greens and yellows pop off the wall, coming together to form a utopian scene of equality, and splashed across the middle is emblazoned a slogan designed to challenge India’s male-dominated society. “The future is femme,” it declares. The artwork stands at the entrance of this year’s India art fair, the country’s largest event showcasing Indian artists and galleries, which opens in Delhi this weekend after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. For the first time, this year’s art fair is showcasing rare items of Indian folk art, some dating back 100 years, illustrating changing perceptions towards older indigenous art within the Indian market, which has always been focused on the modern and contemporary. Among the works on show are a series of bronze mukhalingam sculptures, a representation of the Hindu god Shiva, which have never been seen in public before. “Our folk culture has been much more popular overseas in the last four decades than it has on the Indian domestic market,” said Amit Jain, who curated the folk art booths at this year’s fair. “I’m used to this art and these artists being seen as on the peripheries so it’s amazing to see India’s full history brought into this contemporary space. It’s high time that museums in India look at art laterally and not compartmentalised into modern and folk.”
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India Art Fair 2022: Artist Atul Dodiya talks about his exhibits

Source Fistpost by Noor Anand Chawla
Atul Dodiya is an Indian artist of significant renown, having carved a well-earned space for himself in the cluttered contemporary art scene. He is best known for his paintings depicting middle-class Indian life and for his watercolour and oil series on Mahatma Gandhi. Currently, he is making waves at the India Art Fair (IAF) 2022 with his solo show at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) titled Walking with the Waves – a subtle departure from his previous works – and artworks displayed at the group show in the Vadehra Art Gallery booth. The solo show is a selection from over 365 intimate works that he painted during the year-long period of frequent lockdowns due to consecutive waves of Covid-19. This mammoth project was his attempt at preserving his own sanity and artistic composure, by dwelling on the concept of solitude. Additionally, he is set to be the first Indian artist to be part of the prestigious BMW Art Talk at the IAF, set to take place on Saturday, April 30, where he will converse with his long-time friend and gallerist, Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road gallery on his interesting journey as an artist. He joins Firstpost for a quick chat about the IAF and his work.
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India Art Fair: Advisory Selections

Source Ocula by Annabel Downes
Extensive programming as well as a digital platform make the latest edition of the India Art Fair an exciting destination for South Asian art. Fair director Jaya Asokan calls it a 'testiment to the resilience of the Indian and South Asian art market'. Looking at offerings by galleries including Experimenter, Chatterjee & Lal, and Chemould Prescott Road, such a statement rings true. We select our favourites from the mix.
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Open-source encyclopedia puts 10,000 years of Indian art history in one place

Source CNN Style by Oscar Holland
From prehistoric Bhimbetka cave paintings to works by contemporary art stars like Atul Dodiya and Shilpa Gupta, India has a rich cultural heritage dating back over 10,000 years. So, it came as a surprise to one of the country's leading collectors, the businessman and philanthropist Abhishek Poddar, that there was no single source of authoritative information on the subcontinent's art history. "I didn't even realize that India didn't have an encyclopedia for art. And it was quite shocking that, being one of the oldest cultures in the world, nobody had thought of doing it," he said over the phone, adding: "Every kid knows about (Michelangelo's) 'David,' the 'Mona Lisa' and Botticelli, but there are Indian masterpieces that even 1% of India doesn't know about."
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An Online Platform Spans Millennia of South Asian Art

Source Hypperallergic by Jasmine Liu
An ambitious new platform aims to centralize the history of art in India and South Asia from prehistory to the present in one digital resource. The MAP Academy Encyclopedia of Art, launched last Thursday by the Museum of Art and Photography in Bengaluru, features over 2,000 articles and definitions on topics that span pre-modern art, photography, design, popular culture, and architecture. Nathaniel Gaskell, founder of the project, told Hyperallergic that he noticed “there was very little scholarship or material on South Asian art history online,” with most writing on the topic being exceedingly academic and obtuse, and even then accessible only to those with institutional affiliations.
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The family who invented an art style: ‘He was so scared he would break the pen … now the children do it’

Source The Guardian by Liz Crash
Over three generations in India, members of the Jogi family have preserved their culture with unique and detailed ink works, now on display in Melbourne. Sangita Jogi’s illustration Women Partying, a joyful depiction of an all-girl disco nightclub, looks very much like something you might see in Teen Vogue. In reality, it’s on the wall at the National Gallery of Victoria, as part of a new exhibition highlighting new acquisitions from contemporary Indian artists in rural, regional, and Indigenous traditions, some handed down for centuries. What is unique about 19-year-old Sangita is that she works in a style practised only in her family: Jogi art, an energetic drawing style using in black ink on white paper, featuring detailed patterns and large, complex composition. It’s been practised for three generations of the Jogi family – which is to say, it’s startlingly modern.
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Art Fair India 2022: Exhibitions to See

Source Ocula Magazine by Elaine YJ Zheng
India Art Fair returns to New Delhi (28 April–1 May 2022) for its 13th edition this spring. Ocula Magazine selects exhibition highlights around the city, as well as those in Mumbai and Kolkata.
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Horror and Hope: Shubigi Rao Documents the History of Book Destruction

Source Art Review by Adeline Chia
There are bookish children, and there are bookish children of bookish parents with a fantastic library in which to lose oneself. Born in Mumbai in 1975, Rao spent part of her childhood in Darjeeling and the jungle outskirts of Kaladhungi, then a village in the foothills of the Himalayas. Access to her parents’ beloved library, described in Pulp I as composed of natural and political history, literature and travel, is one of her formative influences. But over time, it suffered several losses (robbery, termites) before being torn apart during her parents’ divorce, when she was a teen. So, while her subsequent research in library destruction around the world is a testament to a lifelong bibliomania, it also a way of processing personal loss.
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Nalini Malani’s Utopia

Source MoMA Magazine by Lucy Galun
In the summer of 1969, Nalini Malani began to explore moving-image art making. A recent graduate of the J.J. School of Art in Bombay (now Mumbai), she was the youngest—and only female—participant in the legendary though short-lived Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), a Bombay artists’ hub founded by artist Akbar Padamsee. Malani’s first stop-motion animation film, Dream Houses, made at VIEW that same year, was inspired by utopian modern architecture—including the Indian architect Charles Correa’s plan for New Bombay (later known as Navi Mumbai, 1964), drawings of which are featured in the MoMA exhibition The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985. Seven years later she paired Dream Houses with a new film to form a diptych, Utopia, which is currently on view at MoMA in Gallery 419.
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Christie’s Asian Art Week Totals $67,890,084

Source Salon Privé Magazine
Christie’s Asian Art Week New York achieved a total of $67,890,084 with 83% sold by lot and 160% hammer above the low estimate. There was global participation with bidders from 33 countries across six continents. During the week three records were achieved and eleven lots exceeded $1 million across all sales. The top lot of Asian Art Week New York was an important and very rare inlaid bronze faceted jar, fanghu, which sold for $2,760,000, more than six times above its low estimate of $400,000. Additional notable results included Gathering of Scholars at the National Library (Dokseodang), 16th Century, circa 1531, which totaled $693,000; a bronze figure of dancing Krishna, which realized $693,000; a magnificent and extremely rare imperial famille rose-enameled glass snuff bottle of the Qianlong period, which achieved $693,000; and Bhupen Khakhar’s The Banyan Tree, from the prestigious collection of Mahinder and Sharad Tak, which realized $2,460,000. Tina Zonars, Co-Chairman of Asian Art, Christie’s, comments: “We are delighted by this week’s results, which demonstrate the strength and resilience of the Asian art market across all categories.
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The 6 best Indian art events to look forward to in 2022

Source QG India by Shikha Sethi
After a sluggish start to the year, the Indian art world is thrumming back to life. There’s a spate of art and design galleries opening across the country, from Mumbai to Kolkata. Young artists are finding new audiences through group shows such as Immerse, curated by Shaleen Wadhwana and held at Mumbai’s Somaiya Vidyavihar University earlier this year. Instead of logging in to online viewing rooms, we're visiting galleries in person once more. And reflecting this renewed sense of enthusiasm is a jam-packed Indian art calendar. Bookended by the India Art Fair in April and the Kochi Muziris Biennale in December, there’s a host of openings, museum launches and exhibitions to look forward to in-between. Here’s what you shouldn’t miss.
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India Art Fair Announces Full Programme

Source Ocula by Sam Gaskin
India Art Fair has announced the full list of galleries and programming for its 13th edition, which takes place in Delhi from 28 April to 1 May 2022. Sixty five galleries will take part, including seven Indian galleries who are participating for the first time—APRE Art House, Art Incept, Gallery Art Exposure, Modern Art Gallery, Ojas Art, Terrain.art, and Vida Heydari Contemporary. They'll rub shoulders with fair stalwarts such as Experimenter, Jhaveri Contemporary, Vadehra Art Gallery, and Nature Morte, as well as 14 institutional participants, including the Kochi Biennale Foundation, Chennai Photo Biennale, and Serendipity Arts Foundation.
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CAP TOWN : JUXTAPOSITIONS BY SHINE SHIVAN AND JANE ALEXANDER

Source Times Live by Sanet Oberholzer
What the gallery refers to as “idiosyncratic two-person exhibitions” is a new initiative by Stevenson to reintroduce the joy of art to viewers after two years of having to enjoy viewing through a screen and two years of “rapid regionalisation” after 15 years of “rapid internationalisation”. The first exhibition of this kind is Juxtapositions, an exhibition featuring works from Shine Shivan and Jane Alexander: “two artists from different continents working in different mediums whose work resonates in unexpected ways”. Indian artist Shine Shivan is known for his depiction of mythological figures and gods from Indian cultures while South African artist Jane Alexander sculptures portray figures of animals and mythical alterations.

Tyeb Mehta painting makes record as second most expensive work of modern or contemporary art

Source The Indian Express by Benita Fernando
All eyes were set on a Raja Ravi Varma painting at Saffronart’s spring live auction on Wednesday evening, yet some others emerged as winners and personal bests. A Tyeb Mehta sold for $5,596,000 (Rs 41.97 cr), inclusive of buyer’s premium (hammer price $4,750,000). This is the highest selling work for the artist globally in an auction. Now, it’s the second most expensive work of modern or contemporary Indian art. Mehta’s Untitled (Bull on Rickshaw) (1999) is a meeting of some of his key motifs and themes—the falling figure, the trussed bull and the rickshaw. The bull writhes on the rickshaw, conveying a picture of vulnerability, suffering and bondage. Both human and animal are yoked to their respective places in life. As Amrita Jhaveri noted in A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists (2005), .”..the bull, with its fiery energy is inescapably doomed to man’s violence. Mehta’s experience at an abattoir in Bombay marked him indelibly; in his art, it achieves metaphoric significance — an animal in the throes of death becomes a symbol for the conflicts of modern life.”
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The Surprising Mix of Tradition and Innovation in Nepal’s Contemporary Art Scene

Source Hyperallergic by Erin L. Thompson
Chitrakar took a sip of tea and looked at his current project: another massive painting, this time of the Buddha refusing to let his meditation be disturbed by swarms of tiny figures symbolizing the “defilements”: hatred, delusion, and greed. He told Anderson he believed that the defilements are not entirely evil. For example, Chitrakar explained that he uses the sense of pride he takes in his work as motivation to drive him to create more, to help more viewers catch a glimpse of true peace. Chitrakar’s reminder that nothing human is wholly good or evil applies to all the factors shaping the lives of Nepali contemporary artists. Tradition and innovation; global connections and local roots; meditation and marketing: all these can be tools for creating better lives and communities. The different solutions and goals of Chitrakar, Sadhu X, Bajracharya, and many others in Nepal show that there’s no one best path to the future of art.
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From Raja Ravi Varma to Tyeb Mehta, your chance to bid for some of India’s finest art

Source Conde Nast Traveller by Diya Kohli
Two masters interpreting the same scene of Draupadi’s vastraharan from The Mahabharata; the strong socio-political commentary that defines the iconography of a trussed bull on a rickshaw; the cross-pollination between rural and urban Bengali society in Kalighat’s patachitra paintings—Mumbai-based gallery Saffronart’s Spring Auctions 2022 will feature masterpieces that span geographical diversity, cultural context and showcase the talent of some of the most distinguished names in modern and contemporary South Asian art. The live auction will be held on 6 April featuring 55 important works by modern masters. It will be followed by an online auction on April 6 and 7.
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l'enfance dans la collection agnès b.

Source La Fab L'enfance dans la collection agnès b. du 24 février au 30 juin 2022
Nous sommes heureux de vous annoncer la présence de Chano Devi dans la nouvelle expositon d'agnès b. présentant la quatrième saison de sa collection à La Fab. dédiée à l'enfance. "Tous les grands ont été petits." Cette phrase, chère à agnès, révèle l’importance que revête l’enfance dans sa vie, un intérêt que l’on trouve tout naturellement dans les oeuvres de sa collection. "J’ai toujours vécu avec des enfants. J’aime les voir grandir, se construire, les écouter… Ils me surprennent toujours, m’obligent à me poser en permanence de nouvelles questions. Rien n’est jamais acquis ni évident pour eux. Leur inquiétude m'émeut." agnès b. Avec ce quatrième accrochage, agnès nous invite à suivre son regard qui se pose avec tendresse sur "ces gens en train de se faire".
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New MoMA exhibition reflects on South Asian architecture marking decolonization

Source Architectural Digest by By Cristina Kiran Piotti
This is also Stierli’s hope—“I would say there are three key takeaways. First, that post-Independence architects in South Asia were active agents in articulating a vision of social progress for their post-Independence societies”. In doing so—Stierli underlines—they also provided a blueprint for how modern architecture could serve as an agent of decolonization across the global South in the decades to come. “Secondly, what we have here is a unique body of work of extraordinary aesthetic and architectural quality and historical significance that forces us to rethink and recalibrate the ways in which the history of modern architecture has been told, mainly from a Western and Eurocentric point of view”. And last, but not the least, there lies the awareness for the precarious state in which modern architecture finds itself in, in different parts of the world—“Our exhibition hopes to raise awareness of the need to preserve this unique legacy and the bold societal vision it embodies.”
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The Man Who Took Gond Art From Tribal Huts to The World’s Top Museums

Source The Better India by Surekha Kadapa-Bose
An image of Lord Hanuman was drawn with lime and charcoal by hand on the humble red mud walls of a small hut in the remote village, Patangarh, of Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh in 1981. The artist was 17-year-old Gond Pradhan boy Jangarh Singh Shyam. The simplicity, the clean lines and the innocence of the figure helped catapult the hitherto confined Gond tribal art and the artist onto the national and international art circuit. That was the year when the government of Madhya Pradesh planned to build a multi-purpose art centre, Bharat Bhavan, in its capital city Bhopal. Contemporary and well-known artist Jagdish Swaminathan was given the responsibility of establishing the centre where both urban and rural (folk and tribal) arts could be displayed. While scouring the villages of MP for tribal art, he saw the drawing of Lord Hanuman on the walls of a tribal home. That’s when he discovered the uninfluenced talent of Jangarh Shyam and brought him to Bhopal with the promise of work in the field he loved. Thus began the saga of Gond art coming out of villages to the mainstream. Swaminathan took it upon himself to introduce the young Jangarh to canvas and acrylic paints. The rest as they say is history. Without losing touch with his tribal roots or focus, the highly gifted boy soon learnt the new medium. His work, from being displayed on the walls of tribal huts, buffalo backs or kuccha roads, received a new stage in the galleries of Japan, the UK, Germany, France and the USA.
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In a Celebration of Craftsmanship, Dior Haute Couture Spotlights Indian Artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh

Source Artnet News
With her spring-summer 2022 haute couture collection for Dior, creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri is paying homage to the art of hand craftsmanship. Embroidery has been elevated from a decorative detail to a “three-dimensional conceptual act,” as it says in a statement from the brand, giving everything from silver lamé jacquard dresses to draped leotards and tights an avant-garde architecture by way of embellishment. It has also informed the large-scale, handcrafted textile panels that framed the collection’s presentation this week inside Paris’s Musée Rodin, where they will remain on display through Sunday (January 30), featuring works by renowned Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh.
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Dior Couture Printemps-Été 2022: Ode à l’art du fil, Madhvi Parekh

Source Le Magazine du Luxe
C’est au coeur des jardins du musée Rodin que le célèbre cube Dior se dresse. Les guests sont invités à découvrir une galerie d’art aux mille et une broderies. Le décor multicolore, brodé par des jeunes femmes indiennes issues des ateliers Chanakya et de la Chanakya School of Craft, reproduit des oeuvres du couple d’artistes indiens, Madhvi Parekh et Manu Parekh. C’est une véritable ode à la création sous toutes ses coutures, un dialogue entre les arts. « La vision collective de cette collaboration a permis de créer une expérience immersive qui célèbre la culture artisanale, et tout ce qui peut nous relier à l’autre. Cette collaboration avec les artistes vise à effacer la séparation entre l’art et l’artisanat. Elle raconte leur histoire d’amour et nous montre comment l’un influence l’autre de manière authentique. » explique Karishma Swali des ateliers Chanakya. À travers cet atelier revisité, la directrice artistique des collections féminines souhaite conjuguer l’art et l’artisanat, le savoir-faire et la force créative. Ainsi, en collaborant avec les artistes indiens, Madhvi Parekh et Manu Parekh, Maria Grazia Chiuri met en valeur non pas la dichotomie masculin/féminin dans son opposition, mais dans sa complémentarité.
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Brothers from Warli tribe to show local art at exhibition in Mumbai today

Source The New Indian Express by Benita Fernando
Mayur and Tushar Vayeda used to travel for six hours everyday from their hometown in Palghar district to reach Mumbai to study there. Belonging to the Warli tribe of Ganjad village, their travel to their college showed them the “balance that existed between a traditional and modern life in India”. The experiences are captured in their paintings made in the distinctive Warli style which is art using white lines on a base made of cow dung. The brothers, who have received much fame around the world via exhibitions at the Setouchi Triennale in Japan and the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, will be making their debut in Mumbai at Artisans’ Centre in Kala Ghoda today. The painting, titled “Our City: Regenerating Hope”, presents a sustainable idea of progress. “This is the future of Mumbai. We are trying to show hope,” Mayur said. “Sea turbines co-exist with an abundance of marine fauna — a different reality from the several infrastructure projects that are currently destroying coastal ecosystems in the city. It’s a philosophy borrowed from the Warli way of life, central to which are sustainable farming, co-existence with nature, and the worship of nature deities,” he added. Mayur and Tushar taught themselves to paint and like many others in their tribe, they also work as farmers and bee-keepers. > read more