Modern India Comes to the Venice Biennale

Source National Review by Brian T. Allen
The India Pavilion shows a sizzling art scene. The India Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is only the country’s second since India’s independence in 1947. It’s entrancing and educational as well as historic. It’s a big show at the Arsenale, once Venice’s military shipyard, and it was, in my opinion, the most impressive in the world’s oldest and most prestigious art fair. It marks India’s coming-of-age as an international art powerhouse. This has taken a long time and is happening in fits and starts, but that’s fine. The art of India is a huge topic, and it’s a lumbering country. The exhibition is a smart distillation of art from this vibrant, massively complex country, the world’s biggest democracy. There are only eight artists in the show. The show focuses on art, weaving Gandhi and the past hundred years of India’s history in and out of a story that’s meaningful to eager, new students of Indian art like me. This is an accomplishment and took discipline. India has lots of artists. The exhibition isn’t small. It functions as a traditional museum show, with distinct spaces, multiple artists, and a balance of linear narrative and room for visitors to explore what appeals to them. It’s rich and rewarding. I don’t often have the honor to write about a historic art show. I’m looking forward to seeing more and learning more about art in this big place.
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Intelligent Designs

Source Commonweal by Nicole-Ann Lobo
What makes an artist modern? The question has long loomed over Mrinalini Mukherjee, an Indian artist who sat at the uneasy confluence of contemporary art and Indian folk aesthetics, never fully belonging to either world. Best known for colorful, hulking sculptures that pay homage to the natural world, Mukherjee was largely misunderstood in her lifetime, regarded as “tribal” by the West, dismissed as “religious” in India. Now, she might be getting the recognition she’s long been due with her first retrospective in America. Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee, at New York’s Met Breuer through September 29, features nearly sixty of Mukherjee’s works.
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The way we were

Source The Pioneer by Sujata Prasad
Gauri’s direct involvement in women’s issues started in the ‘70s, when she began assisting German anthropologist and folklorist Erika Moser and American Fulbright Scholar Raymond Lee Owens in their research on the Mithila art. She began working on the historiography of the art, exploring its social dimensions and tracing the antiquity of some of the artforms to the Brahma Purana. By 1977, women artists from the area became her prime focus. She founded the Master Craftsmen’s Association of Mithila in partnership with Owens to put an end to the exploitation of impoverished, struggling artists by middle-men. The association provided a platform to eminent women artists like Jagdamba Devi, Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Maha Sundari Devi, Bauwa Devi, Yamuna Devi, Shanti Devi, Chano Devi, Lalita Devi, Shashikala Devi, Leela Devi, sikki artist Bindeshwari Devi, paper-mache artist Chandrakala Devi and sujani artist Karpoori Devi. It encouraged them to combat the patriarchal gaze with their artwork. Young artists like Rani Jha were encouraged to introduce avant garde feminist themes in their pictorial vocabulary.
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Celebrating six decades of Jogen Chowdhury's works

Source Millennium Post
Art Critic, curator and poet Ranjit Hoskote who also curated this show said, "Reverie and Reality' traces a retrospective arc across Jogen Chowdhury's oeuvre, from the mid-1950s to the present – a period that coincides with our history as an independent nation, with all its crises, anxieties, hopes and dreams. We have brought together nearly 200 works, spanning diverse phases of the artist's work, and spanning several medium including oils, water colour, graphite and charcoal drawings, lithographs, pastels, mixed media work, and book illustration.
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Warli tribe: 'We are India's soul, don't kill us'

Source BBC

Rajesh Wangad's tribe has used art to tell their stories for generations, living in harmony with the natural world around them. But this way of life in western India is at threat of being wiped out forever. So, using a combination of ancient skills and modern technology, he is fighting to save his home and art from being swept away by India's rapid modernisation. This film is based on his artwork and his story.
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Nikhil Chopra: Artist in Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Source The Telegraph by Smita Tripathi
Beginning Thursday, September 12, Goa-based performance artist Nikhil Chopra will present a 9-day performance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. For nine consecutive days, Chopra will live within the Museum as he presents his performance titled, Lands, Waters, Skies. Chopra, who is the 2019-20 Artist in Residence at the Met, is the first artist in the Museum’s 150 year history to actually live within the museum for any duration of time. 45-year-old Chopra who completed his Masters from Ohio University in the US, has done nearly 50 performance works across the globe over the past 15 years. We chatted with Chopra about his upcoming performance, his love for the art, and his audience.
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The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Fall Exhibition Include Bharti Kher and Dayanita Singh

Source India New England
This October, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will open In the Company of Artists: 25 Years of Artists-in-Residence, an exhibition celebrating the Museum’s legacy of inviting artists to live at the Museum, explore the collection, and create new works inspired by their experience. The exhibition will feature work from dynamic Artists-in-Residence including Sophie Calle, Bharti Kher, Luisa Lambri, Laura Owens, Rachel Perry, Dayanita Singh, and Su-Mei Tse. In selecting the seven women artists for the exhibition, the Museum recognizes and furthers the legacy of its founder—a woman with a bold creative spirit, who championed the artists of her own time. In the Company of Artists will be on view in the Museum’s Hostetter Gallery from Oct. 17, 2019 to Jan. 20, 2020.
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This Photographer Captures the Last Living Tribes of India

Source Vice by Meera Navlakha
In a way, Chotani’s photographs shed light on these communities that are often ignored by the larger Indian population. According to the last nationwide census in India conducted in 2011, indigenous people and scheduled tribes make up 8.6 percent of the country’s population, which is around 104 million people. This is the largest indigenous population of any country in the world. Still, the rights of these tribes are often a contentious point in Indian politics and society. Amnesty International has long advocated for Adivasi rights, empowering the communities and making sure they are protected.
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