CONTEMPORARY ONE WORD SEVERAL WORLDS

mardi 21 novembre 2023

Galleries and Collectors Applaud Inaugural Art Mumbai

Source Ocula by Shreya Ajmani
Mumbai's ambitious new art fair is here. Art Mumbai featured 53 galleries from India and beyond at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse from 16 to 19 November. The excitement was palpable on opening day. Galleries across India were particularly thrilled to meet new clients in the country's financial capital. For those rooted in Mumbai, the sentiment was one of gratitude as they revelled in their local advantage. Many expressed their delight at sharing this experience with friends and family who would not typically travel for a fair, but could now experience one in their city for the first time in their collecting journeys. Art Mumbai separated modern and contemporary works of art in two distinct tents.
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Experimenter 2023: “The Contemporary Art World Cannot Work in Its Own Bubble”

Source ArtReview
We had just started our programming in 2009 and were encountering such incredible exhibitions taking place all over the world, but found no place to know more or to speak about these exhibitions and learn from the amazing minds who had given them shape, had thought intensely about the ideas that anchored these exhibitions and literally brought them to life. We were quick to also realise that in other geographies the role of non-commercial institutions was significant, we had no such institution in a country as large as India (we still do not have such an institution) and if we wanted to pursue our need to know, we had to build this dialogue from the ground up. And that is exactly what we did and continue to do 13 years on. It felt like a responsibility, and a way to give back to the community we represent.
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vendredi 17 novembre 2023

Art Mumbai Opens With a Strong Debut Amid an India Art Market Resurgence

Source Artnet News by Anindo Sen
Mumbai has had a lot to celebrate in recent days. The city had just woken up after a Diwali hangover triggered by an extended weekend of religious celebrations, mithai-fueled foodgasms, and lively parties, when the Indian national cricket team scored a pulsating win in the semifinals of the ICC World Cup on Wednesday. And just a few kilometers away, the inaugural edition of the contemporary art fair Art Mumbai hit a ball out of its own park with a successful opening day on Thursday, November 16 (the event runs through November 19). The fair’s success is another sign of the recent resurgence in the Indian art market. So, what is behind this buoyancy? First off, India’s economy has scaled up significantly in recent decades, with more than six percent growth expected in the coming year, according to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. This is largely driven by private industry, particularly manufacturing, as global supply chains attempt to lessen their dependence on China.
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samedi 4 novembre 2023

Said so much with understatement: Gieve Patel’s life in art and poetry

Source The New Indian Express
For a man whose disciplines were many – painting, poetry, plays, sculpting, medicine – Gieve Patel’s proficiency in each was enviable. Born in 1940, pursuing medicine for most of his adult life, turning to art in his twenties and acquiring cultish respect in whatever form he turned to, Patel died Friday. He left a legacy of depth in simplicity, in words, images, and mediums in between. For his close friend and artist Atul Dodiya, who first became acquainted with Patel after requesting him for a commentary on his first solo show in 1989, Patel’s feeling for his hometown of Mumbai will remain one of his hallmarks. “He painted the people, and didn’t just depict them. What he painted was felt from within, in a spiritual way – whether he was painting an empty railway platform, an early morning day, or a child looking into a well.”
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jeudi 12 octobre 2023

Best in show: India's Experimenter gallery wins Frieze in London's top stand award

Source The Art Newspaper by Kabir Jhala
The Frieze London Stand Prize for the best gallery presentation has this year been awarded to Experimenter, from India. The gallery, founded in 2009 by Priyanka and Prateek Raja, has two locations in Kolkata, and a further space in Mumbai, which opened last year. Experimenter’s winning stand, with its walls and carpet in hues of grey, is loosely themed around the concept of a grid, and brings together an intergenerational group of eight women artists on its roster. On a more abstract level, the grid also relates to how repetition and the act of small mark-making are present throughout the practices of Experimenter's artists, Priyanka Raja says. "Whether it's in the meditative dots of Radhika Khimji's paintings, or Bhasha Chakrabarti's reflection on the slow passing of time, there is a clear formal resonance between all the artists we represent." These lines of continuity also allow for a dialogue across centuries: a painting by Reba Hore, who was born in 1926 and died in 2008, focuses on erasure, and chimes with the overall practice of one of the gallery's youngest artists, Biraaj Dodiya, born in 1993, whose paintings are self-termed as "excavations".
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lundi 2 octobre 2023

Hermès’s artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas speaks to Vogue India on his love for India and the importance of inventiveness

Source Vogue India by Divya Bala
Prior to graduating from Brown University in art history, Pierre-Alexis began at Hermès as a teenager when the brand opened its first workshop outside of the store space in 1991. He counts his first memories as visiting his father and grandfather in the workshop after school, where he continued to work for seven years. “It was a very familiar environment, and making things with your hands, being proud of what you make, learning and transmitting [the craft], this was all my norm. My father used to say, ‘Craftsmen of the world unite.’ By that, he meant that we are all human beings, we are inventive and a creative species. We develop skills and tools and have done that for over 50,000 years,” Pierre-Alexis says. “Artificial intelligence is great, but let’s not forget we have 10 fingers and senses and an incredible apparatus [he gestures to the brain] to transform what Mother Nature gives us for the better, for the long term to make useful and beautiful objects. I really believe in that. Going to India is a confirmation of that.
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dimanche 17 septembre 2023

Solo Show of Mayur and Tushar Vayeda in Brussels

Source Modesti Perdriolle Gallery
Mayur and Tushar Vayeda are two brothers born in the Warli tribe, one in 1987 the other in 1992. Their grandfather founded the first school in their village of Ganjad (Maharashtra, India) and their mother is a teacher. Both have advanced education in Mumbai. After completing their studies, the two brothers have decided to leave the megacity to return to their homeland and participate in the vitalization of their own culture. Their paintings retain this fineness and sensitivity of the most beautiful Warli works. They renew the represented subjects by drawing on the popular stories told to them by their mother Grand mother and other elders from the villages.
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Amrita Sher-Gil sets record for highest price achieved by an Indian artist

Source The Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
Painted during an important period in her oeuvre, Amrita Sher-Gil’s 1937 canvas The Story Teller sold for a whopping Rs 61.8 crore ($7.44 million) on September 16, setting a world record for the highest price achieved by an Indian artist. The iconic work led Saffronart’s Evening Sale: Modern Art, which featured more than 70 artworks from prominent artists, including significant works by modern masters V S Gaitonde and S H Raza, and early works by Tyeb Mehta, M F Husain, F N Souza, and Akbar Padamsee.Before this sale, the most expensive Indian artwork sold at an auction was S H Raza’s Gestation, which had fetched ₹51.75 crore.
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samedi 9 septembre 2023

Framing the contemporary at Chemould

Source Mint Lounge by Avantika Bhuyan
Chemould, started in 1941 as a framing company, grew into a contemporary arts space in 1963 after Gandhy and his wife, Khorshed, opened it on the first floor of Jehangir Art Gallery. In 2007, it relocated to its current home on Prescott Road under the leadership of Kekoo and Khorshed’s daughter, Shireen. Three shows are being held to celebrate Chemould’s 60 years: CheMoulding: Framing Future Archives, Remembering and Continuum. In CheMoulding, Wadhwana has used the term “frame” as a metaphor to hark back to the origin of the gallery as well as to place it in the ever-evolving context of Indian contemporary art. She uses the archive as a starting point to look at both the past and the future of the arts space. CheMoulding will be held in two parts, from 16 September-28 October and 14 November-24 December, at Chemould Prescott Road. She makes it clear that this is not an archival show but an exhibition about the archive itself. For instance, over 30 contemporary artists, such as Jitish Kallat, Shilpa Gupta, Anju Dodiya, Varunika Saraf and Nilima Sheikh, have responded to curatorial prompts from the archive. There is also archival memorialisation of veteran artists such as Tyeb Mehta, K.H. Ara, Bhupen Khakhar, Rummana Hussain and Jangarh Singh Shyam.
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lundi 28 août 2023

Madhubani Art: ‘The Most Rewarding Aspect Is the Sense of Belonging It Gives You to Express Yourself'

Source The Wire by Ashutosh Kumar Thakur
Born in 1962, Santosh Kumar Das is an acclaimed Madhubani painting artist. He pursued his Bachelor of Fine Arts at M.S.U, Baroda. Following his BFA, he made a conscious decision to return to his roots in the village and continue his artistic journey in the traditional style, using a basic nib and ink to create mesmerising artworks. Ashutosh Kumar Thakur, a Bengaluru-based management professional and literary critic, speaks with Santosh Kumar Das about his life and works.
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samedi 26 août 2023

Art and Healing on the Anniversary of India’s Partition

Source Hyperallergic by Rhea Nayyar
Based in both Mumbai and New York City, Anagh Banerjee has pursued retellings of the Partition through his woodcut printmaking series The Other Side (2017–ongoing). Inspired by Käthe Kollwitz’s woodcuts born from the terrors of World War I and other such outputs of German Expressionism, Banerjee told Hyperallergic that the medium’s “gritty mark-making quality” lends itself to the subject of the Partition. The project began with Banerjee’s grandmother, who left her family behind in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh as of 1971) for India without returning for 15 years. Banerjee noted that she recalled her experience of the Partition in a very matter-of-fact tone — “There’s a sense of ‘what’s the point of talking about all of this now?’ that she and others I’ve interviewed for this project express,” he said. “I don’t think she or anyone else had the space or the time or the bandwidth to really grieve the loss of life, language, culture, and home, and they lack the vocabulary to talk about it because they haven’t ever been asked,” Banerjee continued. “I feel there needs to be a more nuanced way of talking about the individual experiences of this migration beyond the violence. I would like to balance the political narrative with the human story as the Partition generation is in the twilight of their lives.”
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lundi 10 juillet 2023

How graffiti gangs became mainstream ‘street artists’

Source Scroll In by Stefano Bloch
Graffiti has become so mainstream in recent years that auction houses, museums and entire art shows cater to street art connoisseurs and collectors around the world. Images in the news of young vandals responsible for marking walls have been replaced by sleek websites belonging to global phenoms such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey. In cities around the world, graffiti is now associated with “street artists” rather than violent street gangs. Today, many cities, from Pittsburgh to Pretoria, invite street artists to help brand neighborhoods that are being revitalized and gentrified as legitimately hip destinations for business owners, home buyers and influencers. Some up-and-coming neighborhoods in cities like Dakar, Senegal; Mexico City; Brisbane, Australia; and Seoul, South Korea offer street art tours and host graffiti festivals.
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Zasha Colah appointed curator of 13th edition Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Source E-flux
Zasha Colah is a curator and writer. Her exhibitions and texts have been an exploration of artistic imagination under conditions of sustained oppression, often through the prisms of liveliness and restorative laughter. Her work considers a range of cultural practices as an unspoken infrastructure of acts and channels of counter-expression in disobedient terrains that confound militarization and earthly extraction. She is particularly interested in the point at which these practices may cross over to become collective. Colah was raised in Lusaka, Zambia, and Mumbai, India, where she lived and worked until 2014. She divided her time between Berlin, Germany, and Mumbai from 2014 to 2017, and for the last six years has been based in Turin, Italy.
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samedi 24 juin 2023

Nalini Malani Wins 2023 Kyoto Prize

Source Artforum
The Inamori Foundation in a statement credited Malani with “creating phantasmagorical spaces with approachable art forms using various media,” lauding her as having “contributed to the ‘decentralization’ of art that has been ongoing for more than thirty years since the end of the twentieth century.” The foundation additionally noted that she “comes from a region of the world where many women face difficulty achieving social advancement.” Malani participated in the fifty-first Venice Biennale in 2005 and exhibited at Documenta 13 in 2012. In 2017, she became the first Indian artist to be given a retrospective at Paris’s Centre Pompidou. Alongside Yanagimachi and Lieb, she will receive her prize at a ceremony taking place in Kyoto on November 10; the event will mark the first time in four years that the award has been presented in person.
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samedi 17 juin 2023

Why aren’t more artist x artisan collaborations acknowledged?

Source The Hindu by Georgina Maddox
In the dictionary, an artist is defined as “a person who creates art [such as a painting, sculpture, music, or writing] using conscious skill and creative imagination” and an artisan as “a worker who practices a trade or handicraft”. This hierarchy has been starkly visible in the art world for many years. The Udaipur-based American and his collaborating team of local artisans walked in on the opening day wearing the signature white fedoras that the protagonist of his works usually dons. But, despite the display of camaraderie, there was change brewing behind the scenes. Shortly after the Art Fair, two of Waswo’s long-time collaborators left to pursue their own careers. (Their names have been withheld for legal reasons.) The catalogue featured two new names: Chirag Kumawat, a dab hand at realistic style painting, and Dalpat Jingar, a border artist and miniaturist. “I am excited about the new collaborations, but, of course, doubtful too. What has been lost, and what has been gained?” ruminates the artist, who has exhibitions coming up in London this month, and plans in motion for a show in Mumbai next year. Incidentally, Waswo is one of the few artists who publicly validates the inputs of his artisan collaborators. The majority do not acknowledge them, treating them instead as fabricators and craftspeople.
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jeudi 8 juin 2023

Mithu Sen on Art, Poetry, and Lingual Anarchy

Source Ocula by Natalie King
Among visceral works on view is Sen's early video performance, Ephemeral Affair (2006), in which the artist is recorded flinching and contorting her face while being tattooed, but we cannot see her skin being perforated. Inducing states of unsettlement and discomfort, mOTHERTONGUE begins with an 'unacknowledgement' by Sen projected on the wall, signalling the awkwardness of Australia's colonial history, complete with word puns. A backlit kangaroo drawing rendered in ink and watercolour hangs nearby (Kangaroo, 2023). Sen's Un-acknowledgement (2023) questions the role of traditional land acknowledgements, which recognise the Aboriginal custodians of Australian land while amplifying its historical seizure—statements that often emphasise their position as foreign guests in Australia, or a museum.
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20 contemporary artists share their perspectives on time

Source Hapers Bazaar by Diya J Verma
Notations on Time, a group exhibition showcasing the works of 20 contemporary artists—on display at the Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai between January 18 and June 02, 2023—poses the compelling question: how does one measure time? Prompting a dialogue to highlight the complex, intertwined relationship between the past, present, and future—creations by artists Soumya Sankar Bose, Anoli Perera, Ayesha Sultana, Gauri Gill, Dayanita Singh, and Lala Rukh, among others, address the tangibility of time and explore its physiological dimensions. “Notations on Time is an experiment in conjuring an eco-system of time where dreams intersect with history, and seasonal cycles with the measure of each breath.
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mardi 6 juin 2023

9 new art shows in India to add to your June 2023 calendar

Source Vogue India by Huzan Tata
As we eagerly await the first monsoon showers to bring respite to our sunburnt selves, the latest art shows in India are continuing to satiate our creative souls as always. A special mention for Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, which is showcasing works by the legendary Arpita Singh at London’s Frieze Art Fair—do catch it if you’re in the UK before the 17th of the month. Akara Art has diversified into two galleries recently, hosting separate spaces for their Modern and Contemporary art respectively, leading to SoBo gaining a new art gallery in the bargain. DAG’s Mumbai space is now displaying Iconic - Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art that was earlier on display in the capital and brings to its walls works by everyone from Amrita Sher-Gil to Raja Ravi Verma. Here’s our pick of more shows to head to this June:
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mardi 23 mai 2023

Early painting by Bhupen Khakhar makes auction debut at Bonhams

Source ArtDaily
Residency Bungalow, an important early work by Bhupen Khakhar, leads Bonhams’ Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art sale on Tuesday 6 June in New Bond Street, London. Painted in 1969, the work was exhibited at the 1969 Sao Paulo Biennale before being acquired by a private American Collection in the early 1970s, where it has remained ever since. The work has an estimate of £250,000-350,000. Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) played a central role in modern Indian art and was recognised for his unique figurative style and incisive observations of class and sexuality. He often explored openly homosexual themes at a time when it was not generally addressed within India, and celebrated the day-to-day lives of the common man. An accountant turned self-taught artist, who came to painting quite late in life as a member of the Baroda Group, Khakhar approached his work with humour, attentiveness, and a boldness which gained him a reputation as ‘India's first Pop artist.’ In 2016 he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Tate in London. His work is included in major galleries and private collections across the world.
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vendredi 19 mai 2023

Dayanita Singh Dancing with my camera

Source 9Lives Magazine
Depuis quatre décennies, Dayanita Singh (1961, New Delhi) développe une œuvre qui se distingue par la manière dont elle brouille les genres et explore les limites du médium photographique. Dancing with my Camera, qui constitue la plus importante exposition dédiée à l’artiste indienne à ce jour, parcourt l’ensemble de son œuvre, depuis son premier projet photographique consacré à l’univers musical du percussionniste indien Zakir Hussain (1951, Bombay) jusqu’à ses œuvres les plus récentes, parmi lesquelles Let’s See (2021), inspirée de la forme des planches contacts. Témoignant de l’invention formelle qui caractérise l’œuvre de Singh, l’exposition met également en valeur le regard singulier qu’elle porte sur des thèmes tels que l’archive, la musique, la danse, l’architecture, la disparition, le genre ou encore l’amitié.
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Interview: Mithu Sen centres “lingual anarchy” to question institutions and the art market

Source Art Guide Australia by Amelia Winata
The title of the exhibition alludes to the more primal and corporeal relationship we have with language, through our bodies. I present it as an invitation and a provocation to abandon our known languages, and, instead, reflect on unintelligible and unknown languages to search for our common denominators. For me, language is a sign of imposed cultural differences, and English, a reminder of colonial dominance. Over two decades, I have identified an uncodified subconscious language through visual and performative practices, which I call “un-language”. It is the primary material around which everything revolves. In this vein, the exhibition also elaborates on tropes and tools of identity and communication that I have used over the years, primarily the use of first-person singular to command an agency for my voice and complicating the guest-host relationship through radical hospitality, which in this case is exacerbated by me being an artist from the global south in Australia.
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jeudi 18 mai 2023

Partition - Partage

Source E-flux
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) today presents an architectural model of its new building. Designed by renowned Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye in collaboration with S. Ghosh & Associates as local architect of record, it is set to be India’s largest cultural centre when it opens in Delhi in 2026. An installation showcasing the model is presented as part of the Curator’s Special Projects at the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Lesley Lokko and coincides with the breaking ground of the new museum in New Delhi. It responds to “Mnemonic,” the theme of Curator’s Special Projects’ section in the Arsenale and includes works from the museum’s collection by major Indian artists Tyeb Mehta (1925–2009), Zarina (1937–2020) and Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–1990). This is accompanied by Touch AIR (2023), a film by contemporary filmmaker Amit Dutta. The museum’s collection of over 10,000 modern and contemporary works draws on the region’s rich cultural history. The new location, covering over 100,000 square metres, will be located on the National Highway (NH8) in Delhi, near the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
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dimanche 14 mai 2023

Art and revolution: Vivan Sundaram, an artist whose work captured the turmoil of contemporary times

Source Scroll.In by Sujata Prasad
His political orientation took a dramatic turn during the 1968 anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, organised by the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, a revolutionary Trotskyite organisation. At his memorial meeting held in Delhi on April 17, Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik spoke about the massive rally at the Grosvenor Square where he and Sundaram were both present. They marched with Pakistani-British activist and writer Tariq Ali from Trafalgar Square to Oxford Street to Grosvenor Square where English actor Vanessa Redgrave made a surprise appearance. The espousal of radical Left politics across university campuses in the US, and in Paris, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Warsaw, Belgrade and Czechoslovakia – where tanks rolled to silence the Prague Spring, the strike of workers’ demanding better working conditions – and the virulent contestation of everyday reality left its impact on the sixty-eighters. The paroxysms of the 1968 student politics continued to reverberate in Sundaram’s life. He lived in a commune with friends, incubating an emotional hunger for social transformation. He returned to India in 1970 after hitchhiking across North America, Europe, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan – drawing acclaim almost immediately when his ink drawings of the Heights of Macchu Picchu, based on poet Pablo Neruda’s 12-poem sequence were displayed.
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jeudi 11 mai 2023

Arpana Caur – An empathetic activist artist

Source Indica News by Sonia Dhami
Amongst the multiple reasons of the heart and mind, which draw me time and again to return to my motherland, is to get to meet Arpana Caur. Despite her exalted position as one of India’s leading contemporary artists, she always maintains a humble and modest demeanor. As my friend and I entered the beautiful red brick building, she received us with her trademark warmth and love and took us up to her studio on the fourth floor, which opens onto an expansive terrace. Amidst the call of the peacocks and birds flying in the skies above, we marveled over the dense tree cover surrounding Siri Fort Auditorium. Arpana explained to us the legal battles that she & her mother, the celebrated author Ajeet Cour, have had to fight to keep the authorities from brutally cutting down these very trees just to make way for the ubiquitous modern malls and restaurants, one sees sprouting unchecked in towns over India. Arpana’s life has been fuelled by activism around the many causes she & her mother have taken up. Whether it is filing legal cases to fight for protecting the environment or distributing blankets to the needy, or running vocational training courses for poor students or exhibiting art –folk, contemporary & miniature, in their in four in house art galleries, the mother-daughter duo have freely given of their time, resources and above all love.
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In Captivating Animations, Nalini Malani Builds Feminist Visions of Justice

Source Artsy by Ayanna Dozier
Over the past 50 years, Nalini Malani has captivated audiences with her feminist mythological landscapes across animations and large-scale media installations. Born in 1946 in Karachi (which was then part of pre-partition India, and is now Pakistan), the artist had her early beginnings in the 1960s experimental film and video movement in India. There, she was a participant in Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), the experimental artist workshop in Bombay (Mumbai) led by artist Akbar Padamsee. Throughout her practice, Malani challenges narratives and foregrounds women’s rights, influenced by her experience with colonialism and migration following the partition of India. This is partly influenced by her experience watching many of her female peers get married and give up their artistic practices. “Many of my [female] colleagues in the art school were lost to matrimony,” she told Artsy. “I’m sorry to say that we lost really great artists to marriage.”
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mardi 18 avril 2023

Mithu Sen: mOTHERTONGUE

Source Australian Art Reviews
Continuing the annual ACCA International series of solo exhibitions by influential artists on the international stage, a new exhibition of work by leading New Delhi-based artist Mithu Sen will open on 22 April 2023. Mithu Sen (b. 1971) was born in West Bengal, and is one of India’s most renowned contemporary artists, with a prolific body of work recognised through awards, exhibitions, and performances at prestigious forums across the globe. Mithu Sen explores myths of identity, and their intersection with the structures of our world, whether social, political, economic, or emotional. Sen works fundamentally as a performer, tangling with politics of language, disciplining of bodies, conventions of society, and polite impositions of the art world.
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mercredi 12 avril 2023

Vivan Sundaram, 79, Dies; a Pivotal, and Political, Figure in Indian Art

Source The New York Times by Holland Cotter
Vivan Sundaram, an artist and activist widely credited with spearheading a transition in modern and contemporary Indian art from European-inspired abstract painting to multimedia forms addressing social and political realities in his country, died ‌on ‌March 29 in New Delhi‌. He was 79. The cause was a brain hemorrhage following a long illness, said Esa Epstein, a curator who, with Sepia International, organized two of Mr. Sundaram’s United States exhibitions. The product of a comfortably elite upbringing (he described it as “colonial”) in northern India, Mr. Sundaram studied art at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda (now Vadodara), then enrolled in the Slade School of London in 1966 on a scholarship. The four years he spent in England changed his life.
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vendredi 7 avril 2023

Caste-pital

Source E-flux Journal by Sajan Mani
I begin this oral history with Dalit social reformer Poykayil Appachan, born in 1879 in Kerala, India. An upper-caste family enslaved him from birth. Although this family was Syrian Christian, not Hindu (India’s castes originate in Hinduism), the fact of their religion did not shield Poykayil from the terrors of slavery. The reality of the caste system in India is one that encompasses everyone and everything. Christianity, too, has actively reproduced the mechanism of caste. Poykayil worked in the enslavers’ fields from a young age. While laboring there one day, he found a human skeleton. His response was to start singing. He sang with deep pain about the plight of his grandparents, who were killed in those same fields. Caste slavery used up the bodies of human beings who were compelled to plough the fields like bulls. Poykayil’s song was never written down anywhere, but has survived through oral practice.
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jeudi 6 avril 2023

Vivan Sundaram (1943–2023)

Source Artforum
Pathbreaking artist and activist Vivan Sundaram, who transformed the landscape of Indian contemporary art, died March 29 in New Delhi following a brain hemorrhage. He was seventy-nine. Through a practice that encompassed installation, photography, illustration, sculpture, video, and painting, Sundaram investigated social and political themes as well as those relating to popular culture and to issues surrounding perception, memory, and history. A great believer in communication and collaboration across practices, Sundaram was of the opinion that art could effect social change. Vivan Sundaram was born in Shimla, India, in 1943. His father was Kalyan Sundaram, a civil servant and independent India’s first law secretary and second chief election commissioner; his mother was Indira Sher-Gil, the sister of pioneering painter Amrita Sher-Gil.
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This Dior exhibition in Mumbai celebrates the visionary talent of Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh

Source Architectural Digest by Gautami Reddy
“Not many know this but Christian Dior was a gallerist before he was a designer,” shares Maria Grazia Chiuri, the creative director of Dior’s women’s collection, who commissioned a series of paintings by the legendary Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh to be transformed into monumental embroidered backdrops for Dior’s 2022 Spring-Summer runway show in Paris. “The runway show only lasted 10 minutes, but these masterpieces will continue to live on and be celebrated for their representation of the power of Indian art, culture and creativity,” Chiuri adds at the opening of Mul Mathi, an exclusive Dior exhibition in Mumbai, which brings the 22 tapestries seen at the Paris show to India for the first time, accompanied by a selection of paintings by Madhvi and Manu Parekh that inspired the project.
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dimanche 2 avril 2023

At the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Isha Ambani Piramal’s Art House proudly champions India’s emerging artists

Source Vogue India by Sadaf Shaikh
Last evening, at the launch of the much-talked-about Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, photographers were veritably disoriented from turning their cameras this way and that as celebrities descended on the red-in-spirit-but-actually-green carpet in droves. Borrowing from the unique South Asian idiosyncrasy of cultural plurality, Sangam/Confluence, the opening show co-curated by American curator Jeffrey Deitch and leading Indian cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote, will showcase works by Indian artists Bharti Kher, Bhupen Khakhar, Ranjani Shettar, Ratheesh T and Shantibai, who shed the shackles of form and medium to devise their own languages of art-making. International artists Anselm Kiefer, Cecily Brown, Francesco Clemente, Lynda Benglis and Raqib Shaw, on the other hand, delve deep into their respective practices to forge an inextricable connection with India. To top it all off, there is also an impressive collection of public artworks on display, ranging from a gargantuan Pichwai painting to Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama’s famous Clouds.
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jeudi 30 mars 2023

India’s ‘first installation artist’ Vivan Sundaram has died, aged 79

Source The Art News Paper by Kabir Jhala
One of India's leading contemporary artists, Vivan Sundaram, has died, aged 79, his Mumbai gallery has confirmed. He passed away earlier today in a New Delhi hospital from complications related to a brain haemorrhage. He is survived by his wife, the prominent art historian Geeta Kapur. Sundaram was born in the northern city of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, in 1943, in then-British India. He was the son of the Indian civil servant Kalyan Sundaram, the first law secretary of post-independence India, and Indira Sher-Gil, the sister of Amrita Sher-Gil, India's most famous artists of the 20th-century. He was educated at the Doon School, before studying at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (MSU) in the 1960s under the renowned pedagogue KG Subramanyan, and at the Slade School of Art, London University, where his teachers included RB Kitaj, who influenced his early works with elements of kitsch and Pop Art.
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lundi 27 mars 2023

Coasting the Topography of South Asian Futurisms

Source Hypperallergic by Sadaf Padder
Artists, thinkers, and activists around the world creatively adapt existing terminologies to describe their visions of futurism, pivoting away from the homogenizing term “Indo futurism.” The need for cultivating more expansive and loving frameworks for futurism becomes more urgent by the day. We are in the midst of a sharp rise in religious fanaticism, caste-oppression, and ethnonationalism that harms over a billion and a half people in the Indian subcontinent and across the diaspora. These tensions are exacerbated by the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, a set of oppressions that bleed across 29 states, 8 union territories, neighboring countries and the global diaspora — which numbers over 5.4 million in the United States alone. This exhibition aims to map a topography of South Asian futurisms, and render visible the multiple strategies used by artists to adapt and develop new futurisms, including Dalit futurism, Subaltern futurism, Queer Muslim futurism, eco-futurism and Sufi Sci-Fi futurism.
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mercredi 22 mars 2023

Le peintre indien S.H. Raza, un grand maître de l’art moderne

Source RFI par Siegfried Forster

Sayed Haider Raza (1922-2016) faisait partie de l’École de Paris et a vécu longtemps en France. En Inde, il est reconnu comme l’un des plus grands peintres modernes. En Occident, très peu connaissent son nom. Entretien avec Catherine David, commissaire de la première grande rétrospective consacrée à l’artiste en France, au Centre Pompidou.

samedi 18 mars 2023

Indian Art News more than 200.000 page views!

This newsletter allows you to follow the news of Indian contemporary art through a regularly updated international press review. Since 2008, more than 2,700 articles have been listed and 200,000 pages viewed. In the left column of this newsletter, a search engine allows you to explore one of the 2700 articles listed according to the affinities of Hervé Perdriolle, art critic, curator, collector and, since 2021, gallery owner in Brussels: Modesti Perdriolle Gallery 27 rue Saint-Georges 1050 Brussels.

Cette newsletter permet de suivre l'actualité de l'art contemporain indien à travers une revue de presse internationale régulièrement mise à jour. Depuis 2008 plus de 2.700 articles répertoriés et 200.000 pages vues. Dans la colonne gauche de cette newsletter, un moteur de recherche vous permet d’explorer l’un des 2700 articles répertoriés selon les affinités d’Hervé Perdriolle, critique d’art, commissaire d’exposition, collectionneur et, depuis 2021, galeriste à Bruxelles : Modesti Perdriolle Gallery 27 rue saint-georges 1050 Bruxelles.

T. Venkanna 'Looking for Peace'

Upcoming show T. Venkanna 'Looking for Peace' Modesti Perdriolle Gallery Brussels in association with Gallery Maskara from April 13 to June 10, 27 rue Saint-Georges Brussels, Belgium.

vendredi 17 mars 2023

Leading Indian Modernist SH Raza gets first public museum retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris

Source The Art Newspaper by Kabir Jhala
One of India's best-known Modernist painters, the late SH Raza, receives his largest-ever retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. SH Raza (1922-2016) (until 15 May) is the first major monographic show of the artist, as well as the first to take place in a state-run institution, and brings together more than 90 works in the capital city of his second home. The Pompidou show spans the artist's entire career, from his beginnings in 1940s Mumbai (then called Bombay), where he was one of the founding members of the hugely influential Bombay Progressives Artists' Group, to his move to France in 1950, where he would be based on-and-off for the remainder of his life, and where he developed a style that mixed post-war French and American painting with Rajasthani miniature traditions. His subjects ranged from country landscapes and churches to Indian temple congregations, Islamic architecture and Western cityscapes; eventually he moved into his more abstract—and arguably better-known—period, which dates from the late 1960s onwards and incorporates elements of Tantrism from South Asian scriptures.
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mercredi 15 mars 2023

T. Venkanna’s erotically charged artworks actually relay a crucial message

Source Vogue India by Radhika Iyengar
Amidst a lush, green gem-toned thicket, an orgy is underway. The natural curtains of trees reveal more than they conceal. Nude figures indulge in erotic gratification. The air is thick with desire. If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine a staccato of sounds: throaty grunts of pleasure, half-suspended moans, soft sighs. T. Venkanna’s artwork, titled ‘Neither There Nor Here’ (2022), belongs to a striking collection of large-scale, hand-embroidered paintings that were exhibited at his solo show Love Me As I Am at Gallery Maskara during Mumbai Gallery Weekend in January, alongside a selection of his monochromatic watercolour drawings on Wasli paper. The artist’s visceral creations are not meant for puritans. He presents human beings as their raw, primal selves who flout killjoy conservatism. The figures in his fantastical universe are liberated beings—free of inhibitions, moral judgment and censorship. Here, the markers of gender, caste and class cease to exist.
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jeudi 9 mars 2023

Vasu Dixit Tracks Folk Music Journeys with Documentary and Performance Series PaDa Project


Source RollingStone by Anurag Tagat
There’s an air of reverence that hangs in the atmosphere where Vasu Dixit is seated or stood around folk and tribal artists in his music documentary series PaDa Project. On the surface, Dixit – the frontman of folk-fusion band Swarathma in Bengaluru but also a filmmaker in his own right – positions PaDa Project videos as his journey to explore India’s longest-standing music cultures, but it’s less like The Dewarists or SoundTrippin than it is about giving the artists their space. Meeting up with artists from Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Dixit’s PaDa Project offers five performances and five episodes (varying from 15 to 20 minutes in length) that explore how deeply connected folk and tribal music is in India across the land.
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Sohrab Hura revisits his moving image works with ‘Half-Image’ at Offset Projects

Source Stir World by Sukanya Deb
Running parallel to the India Art Fair, annually showcased at the NSIC Grounds in New Delhi, Sohrab Hura presented an exhibition titled Half-Moving at Offset Projects' temporary studio space. The exhibition presented four projects, three of which are responsible for having cultivated a memorable oeuvre for the photographer, and are an extension of his retrospective profile at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, presented in 2022 with the same title. Revisiting his works, through this exhibition, the photographer introspects on his journey as a practitioner, his engagement with storytelling, iterative realities, and a falsified image form.
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dimanche 5 mars 2023

The Mumbai Collector Building the City a Blue-Chip Art Space

Source The Wall Street Journal by Kelly Crow
Over the past decade, Ambani Piramal, 31, and her mother, Nita M. Ambani, have steadily gained a reputation in international art circles for helping fund museum shows of Indian art around the world, backed by the $83 billion fortune of Ambani Piramal’s father, Mukesh Ambani, who runs the textile and petroleum empire Reliance Industries Ltd. The family’s Reliance Foundation is the main funder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming summer show on the origins of Buddhist art in India. Yet the plan all along, Ambani Piramal says, was to start convincing faraway museums to send more of their blockbuster traveling shows to India and for the family to support edgy shows closer to home.
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vendredi 3 mars 2023

Sharjah Biennial 15 reflects on complex histories through a contemporary lens

Source Architectural Digest by Shaikh Ayaz
It is that time of the year again when the emirate of Sharjah comes alive with an unprecedented showmanship of visual arts, thanks to hundreds of artists, museum curators, gallerists and cultural ambassadors who descend on the Arabian Gulf to leave behind a trail of edgy creativity and philosophical provocations. Currently in its 30th year, Sharjah Biennial's 15th edition makes a bold and authentic statement about the postcolonial future in the global South. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, this year's biennial is titled "Thinking Historically in the Present”, and it's an ode to the inclusive vision of veteran Nigerian curator and critic Okwui Enwezor who passed away in 2019. Built to encourage reflections on what Al Qasimi calls the "transnational relationships and conversations" and Sharjah's role as a hub for "a spectral and multinodal experience," the bi-annual mega-event once again manages to be global in spirit and scope, yet local in its mission and context.
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lundi 27 février 2023

Le musée indien d’art et de photographie MAP s’attaque aux préjugés et au regard masculin

Source News24 par Robinette Girard
Les souvenirs de Bollywood et les tissus tissés traditionnels partagent la vedette avec les bronzes anciens et les divinités sculptées. Le fondateur de MAP, l’homme d’affaires et philanthrope Abhishek Poddar, a déclaré que la collection met “tout sur un pied d’égalité”. “Toute la différenciation entre l’art ‘élevé’ et l’art ‘bas’, les arts décoratifs et les beaux-arts, n’est pas un concept indien”, a déclaré Poddar, qui est l’un des collectionneurs d’art les plus éminents du pays, lors d’un appel vidéo. “C’est une construction très occidentale. C’est comme ça que nous avons grandi en le regardant dans les musées, mais ce n’est pas comme ça dans la vie.”
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Five must-see exhibitions in Mumbai this season

Source Art Basel by Dilpreet Bhullar
Globally known as the financial capital of India, Mumbai places equal emphasis on the preservation of the country’s rich art history without losing sight of the contemporary. Throughout history, and up until today, the city’s flourishing creative scene has fostered a culture of diversity and belonging: Mumbai was once home to the pioneering Progressive Art Collective, whose legacy continues to be seen in the recognition of art as a form of dissent and change in an age afflicted with myopia, while events like the Kala Ghoda Festival and Mumbai Urban Art Festival act as symbols of the city’s interconnectedness. This season, galleries and institutions in Mumbai are reflecting such ethos, presenting works by a spectrum of established and emerging Indian artists who, through their experimentations in genre, format, and form, illustrate various facets of their country’s history. These five exhibitions in particular are worth noting.
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samedi 25 février 2023

Gond Tribal Art by Jangarh Singh Shyam Sells for Record High at Pundole’s Auction

Source The Wire by John Elliott
Sales of Indian modern art are hitting new highs in the wake of the pandemic. A $16.34 million auction at Mumbai-based Pundole on February 23 produced record prices for several artists. A couple of weeks earlier, the annual India Art Fair in New Delhi that yielded substantial sales with virtually all galleries reportin substantial results for the second year running. The most surprising record at the Pundole auction was a Rs 65 lakh hammer price (just over $91,000 including buyer’s premium) for a Gond tribal canvas by Jangarh Singh Shyam, probably India’s leading Adivasi artist. Painted in 2001, a few months before he died, the 27 in x 40 in serigraphy and acrylic work depicts a traditional scene of Lord Krishna dancing with his gopi (follower), surrounded by a popular Gond rendering of brightly coloured animals, birds and trees. The artist’s previous record of $31,250 was at Sothebys in 2010.
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lundi 20 février 2023

How The Gandhys Of Chemould Introduced Modern Art To The Masses In Mumbai

Source Homegrown by Gulbahaar Kaur
The Gandhy family at large brought forth a new art culture and appreciation that was not bound by artistic snobbery. Instead they found a way to communicate to the ordinary Indian and transformed Mumbai into a cultural spectacle like Delhi and Kolkata. Kekoo Gandhy and his business partner and wife Khorshed Gandhy introduced stories as well as visuals that spoke of secularism and libertarian ideas during a highly polarising period in Indian politics. The two artistic narratives take a deep dive into this history, providing context to the efforts of the Gandhy family in furthering the communist movement in India. The role they played in shaping a post-ayodhya Mumbai and how they were able to form a historic institution. The book had a formal unveiling at the India Art Fair and is now available at bookstores. The film, made by Gandhy’s daughter Behroze, is set to premiere in Paris & British Film Institute this February.
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The Museum of Art and Photography offers a digital-friendly, interactive experience

Source GQ by Sanjana Ray
Sawhney’s statement is accompanied by a giant sweep of a digital screen sporting six categories: Living Traditions, Modern & Contemporary Art, Photography, Popular Culture, Pre-Modern Art and Textiles, Craft & Design. Click on any of these and it opens up a litany of the museum’s replete collection of the artworks under the particular category. Each artwork then opens further to proffer up all its nitty-gritty details with the notion of providing history at your fingertips: a great way to sift through the 60,000 odd artworks on display across the museum. But even as visitors are tempted to dive into a pit of nostalgia (the museum even has on display some of Bollywood’s most classic film posters), the aim remains to give art history a modern edge. Abhishek Poddar, founder and driving force behind the museum says: “My hope for Museum of Art and Photography is that it can reach people, especially the next generation, in whose hands our future is held. More than half of our population are under 25 years old; no country has more young people. I believe they are the ones, the generation of change, who will eventually be the real curators of MAP.”
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samedi 18 février 2023

Drawing from life: The Vayeda brothers are taking Warli in a new direction

Source The Hindustan Times by Shireen Quadri
Sprawled across a canvas 132 ft by 40 ft were shapes that could have been leaves, plants, flowers, birds flying in a limitless blue expanse. The entrance to the recently concluded India Art Fair (February 9 to 12) was a breathtaking Warli mural that became a crowd-puller, a crowd-stopper, a hashtag on Instagram. The work was created by Tushar Vayeda, 35, and Mayur Vayeda, 30, also known as the Vayeda Brothers, as a contemporary take on the Warli folk painting tradition from Maharashtra. Titled Forests of the Future, it marked the brothers’ first digital art work, made by remastering high-resolution images with a software program. The response has been “very overwhelming, like a dream come true,” says Tushar Vayeda. “Our timelines are filled with Instagram tags and stories.”
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jeudi 16 février 2023

Collector Abhishek Poddar’s New Museum in India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Takes a Digital Approach to Traditional Exhibitions

Source Artnet by Cleo Roberts-Komireddi
India’s newest and perhaps most ambitious institution, the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), is set to open in Bengaluru (Bangalore) on February 18 after much anticipation and a few delays. Known as India’s Silicon Valley, the city is home to many artists, yet it has been on the fringes of the country’s art and cultural offerings, which tend to cluster in New Delhi and Mumbai. Founded by businessman Abhishek Poddar, and dedicated to widening accessibility to South Asian art, MAP has been a stop-start journey from concept to actualization, largely due to construction delays. The task of developing a world-leading museum in an area with scant government support for culture, in addition to a relatively desolate museum landscape in relation to the region’s rich artistic heritage, was always going to be tricky. “I had one person who told me when I was embarking on this project, ‘Abhishek, you are making the biggest mistake of your life,’” said Poddar in a telephone interview.
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mercredi 15 février 2023

India Art Fair was all about artistic experience and creative inspiration

Source Telegraph India by Louise Nicholson
Another two artists whose dreams were realised at the fair are brothers from northern Maharashtra’s Warli tribal community. Mayur and Tushar Vayeda, aged 30 and 34, were represented by Ojas Art. They were also one of the fair’s four artists in residence. Modest, and with no formal art training, they were surprised that their rising fame drew a full house for their talk and a packed workshop to learn the symbolism of Warli paintings. Mayur and Tushar always paint together on a canvas and whoever starts an area, such as a river or hillside of trees, will complete it. They reason that each has a slightly different style, though few other people might see this. In their community, they have a deep commitment to encouraging Warli women to keep making traditional wedding ‘chowk’ wall-paintings, and recording all the painting symbolism. “We always go back to the village to listen to the people,” they said. “Our painting is a language that tells stories. We grew up playing with nature in the Sahyadri hills. We have local knowledge, we talk to the shermans, elders, women.” With this knowledge, the brothers give new meaning to an old subject in their big ‘Tree of Life’ painting at the Ojas Art booth: their tree has two trunks, interlaced root systems, and one feathery mass of assorted leaves. “We imagined a forest where all the trees are one, connected, as they really are,” they explained.
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lundi 13 février 2023

The Mumbai Urban Art Festival shows the city’s evolving relationship with the sea

Source Artchitectural Digest by Shubhanjana Das
The city of dreams. The maximum city. The financial capital of India. Home to Bollywood. There are as many names for Mumbai as there are avatars of it. But if there’s one thing that is constant for the city, it is the water that embraces it while simultaneously threatening to engulf it. And it is this relationship of the city with the sea that inspires this year’s Mumbai Art Festival by St+Art India supported by Asian Paints. The three-month-long festival that ends 23 February 2023 aims to make art accessible to diverse audiences by stripping off the formality of conventional art spaces.
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samedi 11 février 2023

What to watch out for at the India Art Fair 2023

Source Architectural India by Avantika Shankar
At Gallery Maskara’s IAF booth, four artists will showcase work across a range of mediums, highlighting how traditional materials can be employed in experimental, contemporary forms. Parag Sonarghare’s larger-than-life, hyper-realistic portraits depict the haunting emotionality of his subjects, who are often from marginalized communities; Prashant Pandey’s abstract sculptures, by contrast, are ephemeral contemplations on human activity; Priyanka Choudhary’s natural pigment text-based works consider the state of the human condition and finally, T. Venkanna’s virulent and unconventional imagery provokes an entirely new perspective on human life. The gallery will also showcase objects of furniture that were born out of a collaboration between T. Venkanna and architect Rooshad Shroff.
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India Art Fair Returns with a Focus on Young Collectors and South Asian Artists

Source Artsy by Reena Devi
“The [Indian] art scene has seen a transformative shift, and together with our artists, galleries, and partners, we’re proud to pave the way for a bold and inclusive new era in the art world,” said Asokan, the fair’s director. “We are determined to deliver the largest and most ambitious edition yet, featuring a diverse range of new and emerging artists from all corners of India and South Asia. “The fair strategy has shifted towards a more domestic focus, driven by strong demand within India and a growing collecting base in cities beyond Delhi and Mumbai who are willing to buy across mediums and price points,” said fair director Jaya Asokan. According to the fair organizers, this approach was a response to the rising number of collectors across India, akin to other parts of Asia such as Japan and South Korea.
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