Anindita Dutta, Anupam Sud, Deepjyoti Kalita, Dilip Chobisa, Kartik Sood, Mohammad Ali Talpur, Muhammad Zeeshan, Niyeti Chadha Kannal, Prajjwal Choudhury, Shweta Bhattad, Siddhartha Kararwal, Sudipta Das SPECIAL PROJECTS Booth # A2 EVERYTHING ENDS AND EVERYTHING MATTERS by Anindita Dutta Claudia Joskowicz, Kartik Sood, Morgan Wong, Rodrigo Braga, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Sherman Ong, Taus Makhacheva, Tintin Wulia, Tony Chakar, Wael Shawky and Zafer Topaloglu VIDEO PROJECT : CONTESTED SPACES INDIA ART FAIR JAN 3 1 - FEB 2 2014
Transcript
Anindita Dutta, Anupam Sud, Deepjyoti Kalita, Dilip Chobisa, Kartik Sood, Mohammad Ali Talpur, Muhammad Zeeshan, Niyeti Chadha Kannal, Prajjwal Choudhury, Shweta Bhattad, Siddhartha Kararwal, Sudipta Das
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Booth # A 2
EVERYTHING ENDS AND EVERYTHING MATTERSby Anindita Dutta
Claudia Joskowicz, Kartik Sood, Morgan Wong, Rodrigo Braga, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Sherman Ong, Taus Makhacheva, Tintin Wulia,Tony Chakar, Wael Shawky and Zafer Topaloglu
VIDEO PROJECT : CONTESTED SPACESINDIA
ART FAIRJAN 3 1 - FEB 2
2014
About
Latitude 28
Identifying with its geographical locale in one of the prime art hubs of New Delhi - the village of Lado Sarai, the gallery is called Latitude 28. As the name suggests, the latitude of the New Delhi situates it aptly while giving it a global frame of reference. From the metropo-lis of New Delhi, Latitude 28 over the years has become synonymous with cutting edge art coming out of the country, seeking out fresh perspectives and innovative thinking in its attempt to stimulate commercial interest in new waves of art-making. The establishment aims to cultivate a space where collectors and art enthusiasts can interact with emerging artists and their practices. Its strategy allows the space to act as a horizontal environment where younger artists are able to contextualise and reference their work with the masters of Indian art, even as the ethos of the gallery encourages them to experiment with medium, material and institutional critique. An emphasis on critical thinking and discursive engagement prompts the gallery to accommodate curatorial projects that weave artworks together to demonstrate the concerns of the curators, and consciously tries to initiate renewed readings of artworks in various contexts. Shows that deconstruct established modes of looking at works, present-ing them with renewed relevance and reassess outmoded norms of the white cube are part of the curatorial agenda.
Latitude 28 recognises the shift from survey exhibitions and museumised displays to art fairs and biennales, as sites where dialogues on the contemporary take place. The gallery attempts to support contemporary Indian art not only through exhibitions, but also by supporting
residencies and organising outreach programs, seminars and talks. Our recent endeavour is a bi-annual residency in collaboration with 1 Shanthiroad, Bangalore and we will be collabo-rating with Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts and Delfina Foundation, London in the coming year. We have supported Kartik Sood, Anindita Dutta, Shweta Bhattad and Siddhar-tha Kararwal in their out of the box practices. Kartik is currently at Gasworks on a residency grant by The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation and Charles Wallace India Trust. He was awarded the Emerging Artist of the Year by FICA and Pro Helvetia. Shweta Bhattad, another artist that we represent, has had performances around the world, including Khoj International Artists Workshop and most recently at Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taiwan. Latitude 28 also supports Shweta’s project Gram Art Residency in rural recesses of central India in her village in Madhya Pradesh. ‘Glitch Frame Lollipop’ at the gallery in 2012, was a landmark show in that it turned the gallery into an experimental space/an incubator for future projects for the artists Siddhartha Kararwal, Amitabh Kumar and Prayas Abhinav, as opposed to merely being a venue for display of artworks.
Latitude 28 has been an active participant at the India Art Fair. This year, its efforts are varied. Besides the show ‘Sacred/Scared’ curated by Nancy Adajania at the gallery space in Lado Sarai, there are three other projects at the art fair grounds. The fair booth (booth number A2) will display curated works of contemporary art, which tries to cover the range of practices of young contemporary artists based in India. Alongside, there is a video project ‘Contested
Spaces’, specially curated for the fair by our director Bhavna Kakar that will screen through the duration of the fair, political and interven-tionist video works by artists from around the world whose works have been a part of import-ant biennales, Documenta and other museum exhibitions. There is also a performance at the venue of the art fair Everything Ends and Everything Matters, by Anindita Dutta, one of the most promising performance artists right now who has been recently awarded the Dame Jillian Sackler International Artists Exhibition Program grant by the prestigious Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, Beijing.
Through these initiatives and many more projects in the horizon, Latitude 28 is still growing as a contemporary art venture, continuing its search for newer methods of interaction with art.
Latitude 28’s vision is shaped by its Founder/ Director, Bhavna Kakar, who has over a decade's experience as a curator, writer, and art consultant. Latitude 28 supports its sister concern, TAKE on art (www.takeonartmaga-zine.com) India’s leading contemporary art magazine. Bhavna Kakar is also the editor and publisher of TAKE.
Siddhartha Kararwal’s ‘Hangover Man’ in a special project curated by Diana Campbell at the IAF 2012
Siddhartha Kararwal’s massive sculptures, made from cunning materials that deceive their original identity, hold up a mirror to society, and in doing so, to the viewer. As the viewer chuckles at the sight of a giant chandelier
made from brushes of diverse texture and size from the Chinese market, the work chuckles back at the viewer. It feeds on its own magnified scale, weigh-ing fifty kilos, as if the illumination at the centre of the room only serves to darken the truth. The Baroque light glares with new glamour, such that our sense of the normal glares with parody. The flamboyant colours of Denture Venture seem to scream at the plastic consumerism of society and the decay
of the same teeth that bite more than they can chew.
Siddhartha Kararwal was born in 1984. He completed his BVA and MVA in the discipline of Sculpture from MSU, Baroda in 2006 and 2009, respectively. The artist’s most recent solo show is ‘Paper Tiger and
Other Tales’, presented by Diesel + Art (in collaboration with Latitude 28), Mumbai (2012). He has participated in group exhibitions, including ‘Matter of Importance’, Sakshi Gallery in collaboration with
Latitude 28, (2013); ‘Glitch Frame Lollipop’ at Latitude 28 (2012); ‘The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India’, the Yerba Buena Centre of Arts in San Francisco (2011); ‘Beauty and the
Beast’, Mathieu Foss Gallery, Mumbai (2011); ‘To Be Continued…’, the FICA group show, Volte Gallery, Mumbai (2011); ‘Demould’ Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda (2011); ‘Two Positions, Part II’ Seven Art Gallery, Delhi (2011); ‘Urban Testimonies’, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2010); ‘Size Matters…Or
Does It?’, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2010); ‘Scratch’, presented by Sakshi Gallery at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (2010); ‘First Look’, Project 88, Mumbai (2009); and ‘Harvest 2010’, Arushi Art, New
Delhi. Siddhartha was represented by Latitude 28 at Art:Gwangju:12 and was also represented by Latitude 28 at India Art Fair 2013, Art Summit 2011, India Art Collective 2011, and Art Expo 2009. He was showcased at the Sculpture Park at India Art Fair 2012 (curated by Diana Campbell – Creative India), as well as a Special Project at India Art Fair 2013 supported by Latitude 28. In 2012 Siddhartha was part
of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The artist currently lives and works in Baroda.
B.1984
SIDDHARTHA KARARWAL
Shweta Bhattad has never restrict-ed her oeuvre to a particular format or medium as she attaches more priority to the concept, thereupon deciding on the medium that would justify its
SHWETABHATTADB.1984 Nagpur
execution. Shweta has also worked across disciplines with totally different approaches, though sculpture and perfor-mance figures most prominently in her work. They act as vehicles
for her work around significant issues of women's education, women's safety - especially in her work with victims of sexual abuse and student suicides. The wall sculpture she is exhibiting at the
Born and brought up in Nagpur, where she currently resides, Shweta did her bachelors in sculpture from her hometown and her masters in Sculpture from M.S.U Baroda. She had a solo show, ‘Wax Magic’, SCZCC, Nagpur, India (2005). Her works have been exhibited in many group shows including
'And the Falchion Passed through his Neck...', curated by Jasmine Wahi, Latitude 28, (2012); Art Asia Miami Digital Show, curated by Jasmine Wahi, Miami (2012); 50th National Exhibition of Art organized by Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, India (2008); 116th All India Annual Art Exhibition,
organized by The Bombay Art Society, Mumbai (2008). Her performance Three Course Meal And The Dessert Of Vomit was part of the Khoj Residency 'In Context: Public.Art.Ecology - Food Edition 1' (2012) and 'Mapping Gender', curated by Susan Hapgood, School of Arts and Aesthetics,
Jawaharlal Nehru University (2013). She was recently part of a residency in Bamboo Curtain Studio Taiwan supported by Khoj where she did a performance called Bharat Mata in Taiwan based on her struggle in conquering her fears as a woman in her own country. She has also been instrumental
in organizing the Gram Art Residency in 2014 and will be part of the Vancouver Biennale Artist Residency Program in 2014.
Chandelier made out of brushes,132 x 60 x 60 inches | 2013
DENTURE VENTURE
art fair, with Latitude 28 also deals with these issues that the artist frequently engages with.
Anupam Sud is one of the finest printmakers among the new generation of artists in India. A large part of the charm of her intaglio and mixed media works lies in her treatment of chiaroscuro. She
has also taken up painting on large canvases, mostly in acrylic, watercolours and mixed media works on paper. Her firmly drawn figuration of men and women draw our attention to the general human
situation and to psychological tensions between man and woman and between the individual and society. Most prominently, her works deal with women and femininity, something that as a woman, the
artist is comfortable working with from an experiential level. Without necessarily delving into the politics of feminism, these works treat women as humanist subjects, while remaining sensitive to their
issues and concerns.
ANUPAMSUDBorn in Hoshiarpur in Punjab in 1944, Anupam Sud did her diploma in Fine Arts from the College of Art, New Delhi in 1967 where she specialized in Printmaking. With a British Council scholarship she studied printmaking at the Slade School of Art, London (1971-72). Her recent shows include 'Convergence' at The William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, USA (2013); ‘Pipe Dreams’, presented by Art Cinnamon and Latitude 28 in Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (2012); India Art Summit, 2011’, represented by Latitude 28, New Delhi (2011). Her recent solo was 'Preparatory Assertions - Notes from Sketch Books', Latitude 28, New Delhi (2011); ‘Anupam Sud: A Retrospective’, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, (2007); Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, (1997);. Exhibitions and fairs that she has been part of include 'Women's, International Exhibition', New York (1975); International Print Biennale, Ljubljana (1981, ‘83); Fifth Triennale - India, and in Switzerland; the Sixth Norwegian Print Biennale (1982); British Print Biennale, Bradford (1985); 'Printmaking in India since 1850’, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (1986); the Eight International Print Biennale, Berlin (1987); International Print Biennale, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal (1995). She curated the 'Mini Print '96' show on behalf of Gallery Espace, New Delhi. Anupam has won 19 awards between 1969 and1985 including the Sahitya Kala Parishad award, 1980-84; a Certificate at Egyptian International Print Biennale, 1994; the President of India’s Silver plaque of 65th and 66th All India Annual Art exhibition, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, Special award, New Delhi,1995; International Print Biennale, Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal, 1995. Her works are in many private collections including NGMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She lives and works in New Delhi.
1944, HoshiarpurPunjab
Niyeti is a post-graduate student of Printmaking (at MSU, Baroda) and the recipient of scholarships at the School of Visual Art, New York (2010), Manhattan Graphics Centre, New York (2006), Inlaks Fine Art Award, Inlaks Foundation, India (2005). Her solo exhibitions include ‘A Script for a Landscape’ at Queens Museum of Art, New York in 2011; Recent Drawings - Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India (2007); Exhibition of Drawings at Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi, India (2005). Niyeti’s group shows include ‘Reconstructing (White)3’, curated by Himali Singh Soin, The Loft at Lower Parel, Mumbai;‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’, curated by Maya Kovskaya at Latitude 28 (2011); ‘Black and White in the Horizon’, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, & Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S University, Baroda, India (2011); ‘Nine – Her Magic Square’ – curated by Veerangana Solanki, Viewing Room, Mumbai (2010); ‘Transforming Technology’ - Philagrafhika, Philadelphia (2010); ‘Size Matters…or Does It? II’, curated by Bhavna Kakar at Latitude 28, New Delhi (2010); ‘A Delicate Point’, Osilas Gallery, NY (2010); ‘White Lies’, Bombay Art Gallery, Mumbai, India (2008); ‘Trends & Trivia - an Indian Story’, Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2008); ‘Erasing Borders- Indian Artists in the Diaspora’, Queens Museum of Art, The Guild Art Gallery, New York (2007); ‘Does Size Matter? – I’, curated by Bhavna Kakar, New Delhi, India (2006). Niyeti showcased her works at the United Art Fair, curated by Meera Menezes, 2013, New Delhi and India Art Fair 2012 at the Latitude 28 booth. The artist lives and works between India and New York.
“Rendering simple images in black and gray on white, Niyeti Chaddha Kannal explores the possibility of objects beyond their material physicality…She deconstructs the image into its component formal properties, distilling the most elusive, ghostly traces of what she imagines to be its spatialised being. Rather than representing the absent object, the works play on the structural presence of the object that she transforms with both her gaze and the move of mind that re-envisions it in this new form. In doing so, she meditates on the embodied relationship between presence and absence, seeing and knowing, as well as abstraction and representation.”
Excerpt from text by Maya Kóvskaya, PhD
1 2
UNTITLED 1,2,3,4 • 201212 x 12 inches | Collage, pen, watercolor & acrylic on museum board |
Etching on paper | 38.5 x 19.5 inchesEd. 13 of 15
DINING WITH EGO
THE TOUCHEtching on paper | 11x 8 inches
Ed. 9 of 15
NIYETICHADDHAKANNAL
B.1979 UNTITLED
Stainless steel, iron, video screen26 x 27 x 6 inches
Video & Performance details:Bharat Mata in Taiwan
Performance from a residency at Bamboo Curtain Studio Taipei, Taiwan
Video shot and edited by Cameron Hanson
2014
Siddhartha Kararwal’s massive sculptures, made from cunning materials that deceive their original identity, hold up a mirror to society, and in doing so, to the viewer. As the viewer chuckles at the sight of a giant chandelier
made from brushes of diverse texture and size from the Chinese market, the work chuckles back at the viewer. It feeds on its own magnified scale, weigh-ing fifty kilos, as if the illumination at the centre of the room only serves to darken the truth. The Baroque light glares with new glamour, such that our sense of the normal glares with parody. The flamboyant colours of Denture Venture seem to scream at the plastic consumerism of society and the decay
of the same teeth that bite more than they can chew.
Siddhartha Kararwal was born in 1984. He completed his BVA and MVA in the discipline of Sculpture from MSU, Baroda in 2006 and 2009, respectively. The artist’s most recent solo show is ‘Paper Tiger and
Other Tales’, presented by Diesel + Art (in collaboration with Latitude 28), Mumbai (2012). He has participated in group exhibitions, including ‘Matter of Importance’, Sakshi Gallery in collaboration with
Latitude 28, (2013); ‘Glitch Frame Lollipop’ at Latitude 28 (2012); ‘The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India’, the Yerba Buena Centre of Arts in San Francisco (2011); ‘Beauty and the
Beast’, Mathieu Foss Gallery, Mumbai (2011); ‘To Be Continued…’, the FICA group show, Volte Gallery, Mumbai (2011); ‘Demould’ Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda (2011); ‘Two Positions, Part II’ Seven Art Gallery, Delhi (2011); ‘Urban Testimonies’, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2010); ‘Size Matters…Or
Does It?’, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2010); ‘Scratch’, presented by Sakshi Gallery at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (2010); ‘First Look’, Project 88, Mumbai (2009); and ‘Harvest 2010’, Arushi Art, New
Delhi. Siddhartha was represented by Latitude 28 at Art:Gwangju:12 and was also represented by Latitude 28 at India Art Fair 2013, Art Summit 2011, India Art Collective 2011, and Art Expo 2009. He was showcased at the Sculpture Park at India Art Fair 2012 (curated by Diana Campbell – Creative India), as well as a Special Project at India Art Fair 2013 supported by Latitude 28. In 2012 Siddhartha was part
of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The artist currently lives and works in Baroda.
B.1984
SIDDHARTHA KARARWAL
Shweta Bhattad has never restrict-ed her oeuvre to a particular format or medium as she attaches more priority to the concept, thereupon deciding on the medium that would justify its
SHWETABHATTADB.1984 Nagpur
execution. Shweta has also worked across disciplines with totally different approaches, though sculpture and perfor-mance figures most prominently in her work. They act as vehicles
for her work around significant issues of women's education, women's safety - especially in her work with victims of sexual abuse and student suicides. The wall sculpture she is exhibiting at the
Born and brought up in Nagpur, where she currently resides, Shweta did her bachelors in sculpture from her hometown and her masters in Sculpture from M.S.U Baroda. She had a solo show, ‘Wax Magic’, SCZCC, Nagpur, India (2005). Her works have been exhibited in many group shows including
'And the Falchion Passed through his Neck...', curated by Jasmine Wahi, Latitude 28, (2012); Art Asia Miami Digital Show, curated by Jasmine Wahi, Miami (2012); 50th National Exhibition of Art organized by Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, India (2008); 116th All India Annual Art Exhibition,
organized by The Bombay Art Society, Mumbai (2008). Her performance Three Course Meal And The Dessert Of Vomit was part of the Khoj Residency 'In Context: Public.Art.Ecology - Food Edition 1' (2012) and 'Mapping Gender', curated by Susan Hapgood, School of Arts and Aesthetics,
Jawaharlal Nehru University (2013). She was recently part of a residency in Bamboo Curtain Studio Taiwan supported by Khoj where she did a performance called Bharat Mata in Taiwan based on her struggle in conquering her fears as a woman in her own country. She has also been instrumental
in organizing the Gram Art Residency in 2014 and will be part of the Vancouver Biennale Artist Residency Program in 2014.
Chandelier made out of brushes,132 x 60 x 60 inches | 2013
DENTURE VENTURE
art fair, with Latitude 28 also deals with these issues that the artist frequently engages with.
Anupam Sud is one of the finest printmakers among the new generation of artists in India. A large part of the charm of her intaglio and mixed media works lies in her treatment of chiaroscuro. She
has also taken up painting on large canvases, mostly in acrylic, watercolours and mixed media works on paper. Her firmly drawn figuration of men and women draw our attention to the general human
situation and to psychological tensions between man and woman and between the individual and society. Most prominently, her works deal with women and femininity, something that as a woman, the
artist is comfortable working with from an experiential level. Without necessarily delving into the politics of feminism, these works treat women as humanist subjects, while remaining sensitive to their
issues and concerns.
ANUPAMSUDBorn in Hoshiarpur in Punjab in 1944, Anupam Sud did her diploma in Fine Arts from the College of Art, New Delhi in 1967 where she specialized in Printmaking. With a British Council scholarship she studied printmaking at the Slade School of Art, London (1971-72). Her recent shows include 'Convergence' at The William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, USA (2013); ‘Pipe Dreams’, presented by Art Cinnamon and Latitude 28 in Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (2012); India Art Summit, 2011’, represented by Latitude 28, New Delhi (2011). Her recent solo was 'Preparatory Assertions - Notes from Sketch Books', Latitude 28, New Delhi (2011); ‘Anupam Sud: A Retrospective’, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, (2007); Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, (1997);. Exhibitions and fairs that she has been part of include 'Women's, International Exhibition', New York (1975); International Print Biennale, Ljubljana (1981, ‘83); Fifth Triennale - India, and in Switzerland; the Sixth Norwegian Print Biennale (1982); British Print Biennale, Bradford (1985); 'Printmaking in India since 1850’, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (1986); the Eight International Print Biennale, Berlin (1987); International Print Biennale, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal (1995). She curated the 'Mini Print '96' show on behalf of Gallery Espace, New Delhi. Anupam has won 19 awards between 1969 and1985 including the Sahitya Kala Parishad award, 1980-84; a Certificate at Egyptian International Print Biennale, 1994; the President of India’s Silver plaque of 65th and 66th All India Annual Art exhibition, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, Special award, New Delhi,1995; International Print Biennale, Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal, 1995. Her works are in many private collections including NGMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She lives and works in New Delhi.
1944, HoshiarpurPunjab
Niyeti is a post-graduate student of Printmaking (at MSU, Baroda) and the recipient of scholarships at the School of Visual Art, New York (2010), Manhattan Graphics Centre, New York (2006), Inlaks Fine Art Award, Inlaks Foundation, India (2005). Her solo exhibitions include ‘A Script for a Landscape’ at Queens Museum of Art, New York in 2011; Recent Drawings - Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India (2007); Exhibition of Drawings at Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi, India (2005). Niyeti’s group shows include ‘Reconstructing (White)3’, curated by Himali Singh Soin, The Loft at Lower Parel, Mumbai;‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’, curated by Maya Kovskaya at Latitude 28 (2011); ‘Black and White in the Horizon’, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, & Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S University, Baroda, India (2011); ‘Nine – Her Magic Square’ – curated by Veerangana Solanki, Viewing Room, Mumbai (2010); ‘Transforming Technology’ - Philagrafhika, Philadelphia (2010); ‘Size Matters…or Does It? II’, curated by Bhavna Kakar at Latitude 28, New Delhi (2010); ‘A Delicate Point’, Osilas Gallery, NY (2010); ‘White Lies’, Bombay Art Gallery, Mumbai, India (2008); ‘Trends & Trivia - an Indian Story’, Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2008); ‘Erasing Borders- Indian Artists in the Diaspora’, Queens Museum of Art, The Guild Art Gallery, New York (2007); ‘Does Size Matter? – I’, curated by Bhavna Kakar, New Delhi, India (2006). Niyeti showcased her works at the United Art Fair, curated by Meera Menezes, 2013, New Delhi and India Art Fair 2012 at the Latitude 28 booth. The artist lives and works between India and New York.
“Rendering simple images in black and gray on white, Niyeti Chaddha Kannal explores the possibility of objects beyond their material physicality…She deconstructs the image into its component formal properties, distilling the most elusive, ghostly traces of what she imagines to be its spatialised being. Rather than representing the absent object, the works play on the structural presence of the object that she transforms with both her gaze and the move of mind that re-envisions it in this new form. In doing so, she meditates on the embodied relationship between presence and absence, seeing and knowing, as well as abstraction and representation.”
Excerpt from text by Maya Kóvskaya, PhD
1 2
UNTITLED 1,2,3,4 • 201212 x 12 inches | Collage, pen, watercolor & acrylic on museum board |
Etching on paper | 38.5 x 19.5 inchesEd. 13 of 15
DINING WITH EGO
THE TOUCHEtching on paper | 11x 8 inches
Ed. 9 of 15
NIYETICHADDHAKANNAL
B.1979 UNTITLED
Stainless steel, iron, video screen26 x 27 x 6 inches
Video & Performance details:Bharat Mata in Taiwan
Performance from a residency at Bamboo Curtain Studio Taipei, Taiwan
Video shot and edited by Cameron Hanson
2014
Even while his background is firmly planted in miniatures, the years Muhammad Zeeshan moonlighted as a billboard painter strongly influences his subject matter. The artist marries these influences simultaneously to the technique of laser scoring, something he stumbled upon while in San Francisco.
His controlled mastery over laser cutting allows him to use it to complement his line drawing, etching the same figures onto the support. While his oeuvre now includes video, collage, drawing, and installation, his hallmark is still his delicate attention to detail and an ability to execute fine line work. Horse and Zuljana, from the artist’s recent body of work is a meeting of the popular poster imagery in his home country, Pakistan with his technique of laser scoring
and the aesthetics of miniatures.
MUHAMMAD ZEESHANMuhammad Zeeshan was born in Mirpurkhas, 1980, and has a BFA in Miniature Painting from National College of Arts, Lahore. His selected solo shows include ‘Posternama’ at Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012) , ‘New Works by Muhammad Zeeshan’, Canvas Art Gallery, Karachi (2012); ‘Special ‘Siri’ Series’, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA (2011); ‘Recent Works of Dying Miniature’, Canvas Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2010); ‘Dying Miniature’, Green Cardamom, London, UK (2008); ‘What Lies Beneath’, Jehangir Nicholson Art Gallery, Mumbai, India (2008); ‘Profane Illuminations’, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA (2008); ‘New Work by Muhammad Zeeshan’, Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2007); ‘Sublime Maladies’, Anant Art Gallery Delhi, India (2007) and ‘Beyond Appearances’, Canvas Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2006). Selected recent group shows and fairs include ‘Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space’, A Green Cardamom Project, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2013); India Art Fair, represented by Latitude 28, (2013); ‘Tactile’, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012); ‘Beyond The Page’, Pacific Asia Museum, curated by Hammad Nasr, Briget Bray and Anna Sloan, Pasadena (2010); ‘Drawn from Life’, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, UK (2010); Art HK, represented by Green Carda-mom, (2008 – 2011); Art Dubai (2008-2011); ‘Size Matters… Or Does it? II’, Jehangir Nicholson Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India, curated by Bhavna Kakar in 2007, ‘Love/Hate’, The Third Line Gallery, Dubai, curated by Nada Raza (2005). The artist lives and works in Lahore.
B.1980 Mirpurkhas, Pakistan
KARTIK SOOD B.1986
ALIF Ink on paper
21.5 x 29.75 inches | 2013
Mohammad Ali Talpur was born in 1976 and did his MFA in Visual Arts from National College of Art in 2001 after he passed his BFA with distinction from the same college in 1998. Talpur’s recent solo shows include ‘Alif ’, Canvas Gallery, Karachi (2013); Green Cardamom, London (2011); Rohtas Gallery (2009); Art & Public Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2008); X.V.A Gallery, Dubai (2008); Finsbury Park, England (2007); Light gallery, Green Cardamom, London (2007); Canvas art Gallery, Karachi (2007); Zahoor -Ul- Akhlaque Gallery, Lahore (2006). Since 2000 he has been teaching at National college of Arts. He was a resident artist for SEHER at Kerala in 2011, was part of the Khoj Artist Residency in 2006, and was a VASL art resident in 2005. He was represented at the India Art Fair 2014 and Dhaka Art Summit 2014 by Latitude 28. He lives and works in Lahore.
MOHAMMAD ALI TALPURB.1976 Pakistan
EMPTY POOL FULL OF MY DESIRE • 2013Archival ink, gouache, pencil and water colour on archival paper, Diptych | 52 x 34 inches each |
B.1980
PRAJJWAL CHOUDHURY
Prajjwal Choudhury was born in 1980, and graduated with a BVA in Painting from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata in 2003 and went on to complete his MVA in Printmaking from MSU Baroda in 2006. His works have been shown in a solo exhibition titled ‘Drift’ at Project 88, Mumbai (2008). Selected group exhibitions include ‘Square is just a Shape’, Art Cinnamon, Hong Kong (2013); ‘Slipping through the Cracks’, curated by Meera Menezes, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012); ‘Art:Gwangju:12’, Latitude 28 booth (2012); ‘Continuum: Encapsulating Contemporary Indian Art’ by Latitude 28 and Art Cinnamon, Singapore (2011); ‘The Annual Show: Two Years of Latitude 28,’ Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012); ‘Other Anecdotes’, curated by Ruchika’s Art Gallery and Niyatee Shindee, Space@SCION, Los Angeles (2011); ‘Notes on (Dis)appearance of the Real’, curated by M. Vari & A. Lodaya, Stainless Steel Art Gallery, New Delhi (2010); ‘Digifesta, Speed of Earth - Media Art Festival’, Gwangju
Biennale Hall, South Korea (2010); ‘India Awakens, Under the Banyan Tree,’ curated by Dr. Alka Pande, Essl Museum, Vienna (2010); ‘Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle’ curated by Bhavna Kakar, Bose Pacia, Kolkata (2009); and ‘Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle’ presented by Seven Art and Latitude 28, Travancore House, New Delhi (2009). He was represented at the India Art Fair (2011-2014) and at the Colombo
Art Biennale 2014 and Dhaka Art Summit 2014 by Latitude 28. He is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, besides having participated in residencies internationally.
Prajjwal Choudhury’s oeuvre attempts at projecting the issue of ‘recycling’ using tongue-in-cheek, wry sense of humor. He gathers his inspiration from mundane objects such as matchboxes, which are part of the daily visual culture in India and engineers his thought-provoking works around it. Defying the miniscule nature of this object, Choudhury treats them with an innovative dynamism and transfers on them images of iconic artworks – including works by Andy Warhol, Picasso, Damien Hirst, Marcel Duchamp, Salva-dor Dali, Subodh Gupta and Atul Dodiya amongst others.
DetailOffset print on handmade matchboxes
“Confrontation of images with words is like that of the body with the soul, but when they enter into an eternal and sacred state of mind, they become the ultimate expression of life. Calligraphy is a subtle
method, which I use to scratch my body and soul. It is neither a political nor a social comment but an
investigation of Islamic philosophical and sacred art. Uncountable curved and straight lines dancing like a
classical dancer draw our attention to the deepest visual experience of form, as is the idea in South
Asian philosophy.”
HORSE AND ZULJANA • Gouache and laser scoring on wasli | 60 x 80 inches | 2013
Kartik Sood was born in 1986 and pursued his Bachelors in Painting from College of Art, New Delhi in 2008 and completed his Post-Gradua-tion in Painting from Faculty of Fine of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda in 2010. His selected participations include ‘Sacred/Scared’, curated by Nancy Adajania, Latitude 28 (2014); ‘Translucent Video Art Festival’, curated by Kanchi Mehta, What about art? (2013); ‘Matter of Importance’, Sakshi gallery in collaboration with Latitude 28, Mumbai (2013); ‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’, curated by Maya Kovskaya, Latitude 28 (2011); ‘Urban Testimonies’, Latitude 28 (2010); ‘New Focus’, organized by Sakshi Gallery at FTII, Pune (2010); and ‘Scratch’, curated by Swapan Seth Sakshi Gallery, (2010).He has also been represented by the Latitude 28 at Art Gwangju 2012, India Art Summit, 2011, and the India Art Fair 2012 and 2013, as well as the India Art Collective 2011 online fair. Kartik was represented at Dhaka Art Summit 2014 by Latitude 28. He is the recipient of The Inlaks Shivadasani Foundation/ Charles Wallace India Trust Award, 2014 and Emerging artist award, presented in collaboration with Pro Helvetia- Swiss Arts Council and FICA, 2013. He was the recipient of the Nasreen Mohammedi Scholarship at MSU Baroda. The artist currently lives and works between New Delhi and Baroda.
“Every day I write, draw, shoot videos or record sounds. My artworks are stories developed from these diaries. Subtle in colour and painterly in approach. Autobiographical, inventive and dislocated. Sometimes the self dressed up as if on a stage. Like a collage of memories pulled together.” (excerpt from the artist’s statement)
Kartik Sood’s work at its heart is about telling stories. It is influenced by literature and the art of storytelling. He weaves them like an author first then like a visual artist. His current work, including the diptych Empty Pool Full of My Desire, is a part of a majormulti-projection audio-video piece and talks about desire and solitude - how an inner world seeps into the outer world as symbols to signify its force. His stories are about reality as he perceives it, but often they lose the essence of reality (just like reality does) and turn into fictitious tales. Stories are knit out of his interactions with people, from conversations silly and profound, from his surroundings, and from music and art. They start intuitively and grow organically.
Even while his background is firmly planted in miniatures, the years Muhammad Zeeshan moonlighted as a billboard painter strongly influences his subject matter. The artist marries these influences simultaneously to the technique of laser scoring, something he stumbled upon while in San Francisco.
His controlled mastery over laser cutting allows him to use it to complement his line drawing, etching the same figures onto the support. While his oeuvre now includes video, collage, drawing, and installation, his hallmark is still his delicate attention to detail and an ability to execute fine line work. Horse and Zuljana, from the artist’s recent body of work is a meeting of the popular poster imagery in his home country, Pakistan with his technique of laser scoring
and the aesthetics of miniatures.
MUHAMMAD ZEESHANMuhammad Zeeshan was born in Mirpurkhas, 1980, and has a BFA in Miniature Painting from National College of Arts, Lahore. His selected solo shows include ‘Posternama’ at Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012) , ‘New Works by Muhammad Zeeshan’, Canvas Art Gallery, Karachi (2012); ‘Special ‘Siri’ Series’, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA (2011); ‘Recent Works of Dying Miniature’, Canvas Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2010); ‘Dying Miniature’, Green Cardamom, London, UK (2008); ‘What Lies Beneath’, Jehangir Nicholson Art Gallery, Mumbai, India (2008); ‘Profane Illuminations’, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA (2008); ‘New Work by Muhammad Zeeshan’, Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2007); ‘Sublime Maladies’, Anant Art Gallery Delhi, India (2007) and ‘Beyond Appearances’, Canvas Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2006). Selected recent group shows and fairs include ‘Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space’, A Green Cardamom Project, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2013); India Art Fair, represented by Latitude 28, (2013); ‘Tactile’, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012); ‘Beyond The Page’, Pacific Asia Museum, curated by Hammad Nasr, Briget Bray and Anna Sloan, Pasadena (2010); ‘Drawn from Life’, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, UK (2010); Art HK, represented by Green Carda-mom, (2008 – 2011); Art Dubai (2008-2011); ‘Size Matters… Or Does it? II’, Jehangir Nicholson Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India, curated by Bhavna Kakar in 2007, ‘Love/Hate’, The Third Line Gallery, Dubai, curated by Nada Raza (2005). The artist lives and works in Lahore.
B.1980 Mirpurkhas, Pakistan
KARTIK SOOD B.1986
ALIF Ink on paper
21.5 x 29.75 inches | 2013
Mohammad Ali Talpur was born in 1976 and did his MFA in Visual Arts from National College of Art in 2001 after he passed his BFA with distinction from the same college in 1998. Talpur’s recent solo shows include ‘Alif ’, Canvas Gallery, Karachi (2013); Green Cardamom, London (2011); Rohtas Gallery (2009); Art & Public Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2008); X.V.A Gallery, Dubai (2008); Finsbury Park, England (2007); Light gallery, Green Cardamom, London (2007); Canvas art Gallery, Karachi (2007); Zahoor -Ul- Akhlaque Gallery, Lahore (2006). Since 2000 he has been teaching at National college of Arts. He was a resident artist for SEHER at Kerala in 2011, was part of the Khoj Artist Residency in 2006, and was a VASL art resident in 2005. He was represented at the India Art Fair 2014 and Dhaka Art Summit 2014 by Latitude 28. He lives and works in Lahore.
MOHAMMAD ALI TALPURB.1976 Pakistan
EMPTY POOL FULL OF MY DESIRE • 2013Archival ink, gouache, pencil and water colour on archival paper, Diptych | 52 x 34 inches each |
B.1980
PRAJJWAL CHOUDHURY
Prajjwal Choudhury was born in 1980, and graduated with a BVA in Painting from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata in 2003 and went on to complete his MVA in Printmaking from MSU Baroda in 2006. His works have been shown in a solo exhibition titled ‘Drift’ at Project 88, Mumbai (2008). Selected group exhibitions include ‘Square is just a Shape’, Art Cinnamon, Hong Kong (2013); ‘Slipping through the Cracks’, curated by Meera Menezes, Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012); ‘Art:Gwangju:12’, Latitude 28 booth (2012); ‘Continuum: Encapsulating Contemporary Indian Art’ by Latitude 28 and Art Cinnamon, Singapore (2011); ‘The Annual Show: Two Years of Latitude 28,’ Latitude 28, New Delhi (2012); ‘Other Anecdotes’, curated by Ruchika’s Art Gallery and Niyatee Shindee, Space@SCION, Los Angeles (2011); ‘Notes on (Dis)appearance of the Real’, curated by M. Vari & A. Lodaya, Stainless Steel Art Gallery, New Delhi (2010); ‘Digifesta, Speed of Earth - Media Art Festival’, Gwangju
Biennale Hall, South Korea (2010); ‘India Awakens, Under the Banyan Tree,’ curated by Dr. Alka Pande, Essl Museum, Vienna (2010); ‘Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle’ curated by Bhavna Kakar, Bose Pacia, Kolkata (2009); and ‘Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle’ presented by Seven Art and Latitude 28, Travancore House, New Delhi (2009). He was represented at the India Art Fair (2011-2014) and at the Colombo
Art Biennale 2014 and Dhaka Art Summit 2014 by Latitude 28. He is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, besides having participated in residencies internationally.
Prajjwal Choudhury’s oeuvre attempts at projecting the issue of ‘recycling’ using tongue-in-cheek, wry sense of humor. He gathers his inspiration from mundane objects such as matchboxes, which are part of the daily visual culture in India and engineers his thought-provoking works around it. Defying the miniscule nature of this object, Choudhury treats them with an innovative dynamism and transfers on them images of iconic artworks – including works by Andy Warhol, Picasso, Damien Hirst, Marcel Duchamp, Salva-dor Dali, Subodh Gupta and Atul Dodiya amongst others.
DetailOffset print on handmade matchboxes
“Confrontation of images with words is like that of the body with the soul, but when they enter into an eternal and sacred state of mind, they become the ultimate expression of life. Calligraphy is a subtle
method, which I use to scratch my body and soul. It is neither a political nor a social comment but an
investigation of Islamic philosophical and sacred art. Uncountable curved and straight lines dancing like a
classical dancer draw our attention to the deepest visual experience of form, as is the idea in South
Asian philosophy.”
HORSE AND ZULJANA • Gouache and laser scoring on wasli | 60 x 80 inches | 2013
Kartik Sood was born in 1986 and pursued his Bachelors in Painting from College of Art, New Delhi in 2008 and completed his Post-Gradua-tion in Painting from Faculty of Fine of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda in 2010. His selected participations include ‘Sacred/Scared’, curated by Nancy Adajania, Latitude 28 (2014); ‘Translucent Video Art Festival’, curated by Kanchi Mehta, What about art? (2013); ‘Matter of Importance’, Sakshi gallery in collaboration with Latitude 28, Mumbai (2013); ‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’, curated by Maya Kovskaya, Latitude 28 (2011); ‘Urban Testimonies’, Latitude 28 (2010); ‘New Focus’, organized by Sakshi Gallery at FTII, Pune (2010); and ‘Scratch’, curated by Swapan Seth Sakshi Gallery, (2010).He has also been represented by the Latitude 28 at Art Gwangju 2012, India Art Summit, 2011, and the India Art Fair 2012 and 2013, as well as the India Art Collective 2011 online fair. Kartik was represented at Dhaka Art Summit 2014 by Latitude 28. He is the recipient of The Inlaks Shivadasani Foundation/ Charles Wallace India Trust Award, 2014 and Emerging artist award, presented in collaboration with Pro Helvetia- Swiss Arts Council and FICA, 2013. He was the recipient of the Nasreen Mohammedi Scholarship at MSU Baroda. The artist currently lives and works between New Delhi and Baroda.
“Every day I write, draw, shoot videos or record sounds. My artworks are stories developed from these diaries. Subtle in colour and painterly in approach. Autobiographical, inventive and dislocated. Sometimes the self dressed up as if on a stage. Like a collage of memories pulled together.” (excerpt from the artist’s statement)
Kartik Sood’s work at its heart is about telling stories. It is influenced by literature and the art of storytelling. He weaves them like an author first then like a visual artist. His current work, including the diptych Empty Pool Full of My Desire, is a part of a majormulti-projection audio-video piece and talks about desire and solitude - how an inner world seeps into the outer world as symbols to signify its force. His stories are about reality as he perceives it, but often they lose the essence of reality (just like reality does) and turn into fictitious tales. Stories are knit out of his interactions with people, from conversations silly and profound, from his surroundings, and from music and art. They start intuitively and grow organically.
LAST SUPPER • Paper, water color, coffee, ply wood, and wooden blocks| 66.25 x 35.25 x 4.25 inches(with frame)| 2013
BENEATH HIS ROOM LIES A CELLWood, TV, speakers, DVD player, DVD's, CD's and VCD's | 54 x 30 x 24 inches
DEEPJYOTI KALITADeepjyoti Kalita was born in 1982, Assam. He pursued his Bachelors and Masters in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda in 2008 and 2010 respectively. He has participated in several group shows including ‘The Public Art Space: Urban Icons’, curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki, India Art Festival (2013); ‘The Baroda March’, Coomaraswamy Hall, Mumbai (2012); ‘Collective Metamophosis’ curated by Kapil Chopra, Nature Morte (2011); ‘Urban Testimonies’ Latitude 28 (2010); ‘Strands Come Together’ at the Strand Art Room, Colaba, Mumbai (2008); ‘Once Upon a Time’, Strand Art Room, Colaba, Mumbai (2008); Academic display at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda (2007- 08). Kalita is the recipient of the Emerging Artist Award by Sarjan Art Gallery (2010), Gold medal for BVA (2008-09), Jeram Patel Award (2007- 08), Mahendra Pandya Award (2006- 07), Sankho Chaudhary Award (2005- 06). Deepjyo-ti’s works were showcased at The India Art Fair 2012-2014 and the Dhaka Art Summit
2014 by Latitude 28. The artist currently lives and works in Baroda.
B.1982, Assam
SUDIPTADAS
B. 1985 Assam
Sudipta Das was born in Assam, in 1985. She did her BFA and MFA in painting from Kala Bhavan, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan 2009 and 2011 respectively. She had a solo show, ‘Break II’ at Gandhara Art Gallery in 2013. Recent group shows include ‘Diver-Cities’ curated by Bhavna Kakar, Latitude 28, (2013);
‘The Web of Water’ curated by Sandhya Gajjar, Artcore gallery Derby, UK (2013); ‘Fluid’ curated by V Divakar, in Site, Baroda; ‘Contested Terrain’, Kochi, (2013); ‘Art Virtual Real’, curated by Georgina
Maddox, Art Alive Gallery, (2012); Group show at Exhibit 320, curated by Ranjita Chaney (2012); ‘Her work is Never Done Part – II’, curated by Bose Krishnamachari, BMB Art Gallery, Bombay (2010). She participated in Kanoria Residency (2011); Saavad Residency, Santiniketan for 6 months (2011). She has
also received various Merit Scholarships from Visva Bharati and the Government of India. She currently has a studio in Baroda Space Studio.
“My present work refers to a diasporic memory which pertains to the partition of Bengal, thus addressing issues of cultural displacement and politi-cal turmoil. I attempt to interrogate several socio-political histories through the mangled imag-eries. The physical act of defacing creates new iden-tities. The Last Supper becomes the metaphor of an important historic event where I consciously replace the iconic characters with portraits of John Doe.”
Das deconstructs iconic signifiers of history in this work and transmits its fragments through a percep-tual, subjective lens before allowing them to contrib-ute to the baggage of history that penetrates our realities. History does not disappear in the face of the ‘new’, it comes to be reconstructed and lives on in the present and the future. Das reminds us that we endure the experience of the contemporary subjec-tively, while carrying with us the inheritance of a past that does not remain forgotten.
“The Purush & Prakriti are referred to as necessary companions for a harmonious co-existence according to our ancient philosophy. But even when one of them ceases to accompany the other, the other does not perish away in lonesome misery, rather continues to live nevertheless. Despite the inherent anthropomorphic need for intimacy we acclima-tize our desires according to our situations. In such a scenario it is our ego/the self that gives us the endurance to fulfill the basic human need to survive. On one hand our heart is deperate for union and co-exis-tence, on the other, it is silenced by a righteous self. The muddled imag-ery flashing on the screen is a signifier of the chaos that our mind expe-riences. They are not mere channels forecasting onscreen but are the
signifier of an internal turmoil prevailing in oneself.”
SCULPTING SPACE: PERCEPTUAL MULTISTABILITY AND SPATIAL PROTAGONISM IN THE WORK OF DILIP CHOBISAby Maya Kóvskaya, PhD
Dilip Chobisa’s oeuvre invokes a set of reflections on spatiality, its nature and subsequent effect on our preconceived notions of space. While space is often treated as a setting, in Chobisa’s work, space in unexpectedly transfigured into protagonist. Constructed through various angles, perspectives and composed by figures, shadows and depths, space is presented in dialogue
with lines and shapes to produce a visual field of “perceptual multistablity.”
The concept of perceptual multistability has a venerable usage in the analysis of both visual arts and cognitive science, as well as in the study of optical illusions. Its most referenced usage has been in connection with the works of Dutch lithographer M.C. Escher. Perceptual multistability occurs when structures, patterns and designs attain a level of ambiguity such that it is
difficult to view them as static and mono-vocal, i.e. subject to single, “unique” interpretive frameworks.
In Chobisa’s work, we can clearly see the ways in which a persistent pattern of perceptual multistability operates when one object is shown in relation to another, thereby creating the illusory sense of depth that is noticeable in many of Chobisa’s works. In fact, ironically and notably, it is not actual depth but visual interferences with our ability to perceive depth that
trigger the inversion of what are called “depth values” and thus play with our vision. For example, the contrast and juxtaposition of a wall or a room depicted in relation to another wall or room shown in the work adds to a complexity of perception as our gaze shifts from one end of the work to another and from one focal point to another. Think of the room of interlocking,
never-ending staircases in Escher’s work as an example. Yet while the Dutch great master’s work turned on perspective, Chobisa’s work dialogues with the visual experience of space.
Thus, in Chobisa’s study of spatiality, it is specifically depth that is visually presented to create a variety of interpretations. Distorting the static nature of space, suggestions of movement are expressed through the angles, shades and shadows of shapes and figures that frequently appear in Chobisa’s work, such as walls, windows, corners and other such architectural
objects/structures. The resulting optical illusion transfers to the viewer an illusory sense of depth from objects that are presented in a two-dimensional format, yet appear as though they were three-dimensional. In each of these works, new visual evocations can be formed as one looks at them closely, and again as one gazes askance. Given the inversion of depth values in relation to the spaces depicted, the perceptual multistability that is created by the movement of the eyes as we observe these works opens us up to the subjectification of spatial perception.
The meditations on space through subjectivity redefine spatiality in relationship to the way it is experienced by the viewer. But this is not to imply that space is simply a passive vector of the viewer’s subjective gaze. Indeed the opposite is so, for it is precisely the way in which depth values are inverted and space is destabilised within the work that accounts for the how perceptu-al multistability works. Space (as constituted by the artist through this visual sleight of hand) becomes the protagonist of these destabilised, subjective and multiple visual experiences. For example, while gazing at Chobisa’s works (most of which are “Untitled), this distorted sense of depth is stimulated visually by the interplay between space in its various manifestations in
the works: rooms that open into other (deeper) rooms, windows that lead to an unending void, and shades that contain shadows that accentuate perspective. The visual realm presented in Chobisa’s work thus becomes a mirror for reflecting space that has been organized objectively by the artist’s use of optical illusion techniques, yet leaves its impression on our depth
perception as it is stimulated anew through the interaction of our own subjectivity, the artist’s visual ruses and the resultant spatial protagonism that emerges.
The protagonism of space that Chobisa engenders, then, enables viewers to arrive at a juxtaposed view of the works taken together as shifting sets of different, yet similar wholes, depend-ing on the arrangement and order of viewing. Different spaces brought into being by the relationship among walls, windows and open passages allow us to put them in contrast with one
another as our point of view shifts from one perception of space to another. In these works, the subtle becomes prominent as space acquires shape and presence, and becomes a focal point through the inversion of depth values, as we perceive it in its various manifestations. In some instances, it is a solitary window leading to an unknown void, or a chequered floor reflected in and through the glass, while in others it is angular shadows reflected in different directions from walls that meet at corners that point to an above and below, that turn the composition of
Chobisa’s works into a relational play from which spatial protagonism emerges. In short, all the other elements in the work exist and interact as subordinate to (even as they are also necessary to) the constitution of in between spaces that emerge from their juxtapositioning. In this way, the contrast and interplay between encompassed and enclosed indoor spaces that elaborate openings in the form of quadrangular shapes, on the one hand, and prominent windows that lead to the representation of voids or unending open spaces, on the other hand,
work together to create a sense of dissonance and vertigo that makes us re- experience space through these works in which space itself (and spatiality as a condition, more generally) becomes the star of the show.
While Chobisa’s spaces that are often depicted as enclosed indoor settings, they transmit a sense of openness. Indeed, to engage Chobisa’s works is to travel within their inverted depths; to find movement in stillness and the appearance of three-dimensional objects within two-dimensional representations. The enclosure and demarcation of space through representations of geometric architectural structures (such as walls, doors, windows, floors and ceilings) recalibrates our multiple and differential experiences of “space as protagonist” through time-honored devices that product “perceptual multistability,” making the artist as much as “sculptor of space” working outside the boxes of ordinary perception, as he is an artist working “within the
frame” of commonplace dimensionality.
DILIP CHOBISA
B.1978
Born in 1978, Dilip Chobisa completed his BVA and MVA in Sculpture at the M.S. University, Baroda in 2002 and 2004 respectively. The artist presented solo exhibition, represented by Latitude 28 at the India Art Fair, 2012 and had another solo show ‘Silent Celebration’, Anant Art Gallery
(2010). His group shows and fairs include the Dhaka Art Summit 2014, represented by Latitude 28; ‘Diver|Cities I – Asian Contemporary Art’, by Latitude 28 and Art Cinnamon, Singapore (2012); ‘Fragile’, Paradox and 1x1 Gallery, Singapore (2012); Art Gwangju, represented by Latitude 28
(2012); Art Chennai, represented by Latitude 28 (2012); ‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’, curated by Maya Kóvskaya, Latitude 28 (2011); Commonwealth Games Exhibition, New Delhi (2010); ‘Silent City’, Aicon Gallery, London (2010); ‘Size Matters or Does it?’, Latitude 28, New Delhi
(2010); ‘Immersions’, curated by Deeksha Nath, Anant Gallery, New Delhi (2009); ‘Keep Drawing’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2009); ‘SLICK 2008’, Aicon Art Gallery, London (2008); ‘Urgent: 10ml of Contemporary Needed’ presented by FICA, New Delhi (2008). ‘Instilling Life’, Hacienda
Art Gallery, Mumbai (2007); and ‘Keep Drawing’, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai (2007). Chobisa was awarded Emerging Artist of the Year by Harmony Foundation Award, Mumbai in 2008. The artist lives and works in Baroda.
NOSTALGIA 1,2 • 20145 x 5 feet| Graphite on paper, digital print on canvas, silk screen, thread, mixed media, painted wooden frame and acrylic glass |
LAST SUPPER • Paper, water color, coffee, ply wood, and wooden blocks| 66.25 x 35.25 x 4.25 inches(with frame)| 2013
BENEATH HIS ROOM LIES A CELLWood, TV, speakers, DVD player, DVD's, CD's and VCD's | 54 x 30 x 24 inches
DEEPJYOTI KALITADeepjyoti Kalita was born in 1982, Assam. He pursued his Bachelors and Masters in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda in 2008 and 2010 respectively. He has participated in several group shows including ‘The Public Art Space: Urban Icons’, curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki, India Art Festival (2013); ‘The Baroda March’, Coomaraswamy Hall, Mumbai (2012); ‘Collective Metamophosis’ curated by Kapil Chopra, Nature Morte (2011); ‘Urban Testimonies’ Latitude 28 (2010); ‘Strands Come Together’ at the Strand Art Room, Colaba, Mumbai (2008); ‘Once Upon a Time’, Strand Art Room, Colaba, Mumbai (2008); Academic display at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda (2007- 08). Kalita is the recipient of the Emerging Artist Award by Sarjan Art Gallery (2010), Gold medal for BVA (2008-09), Jeram Patel Award (2007- 08), Mahendra Pandya Award (2006- 07), Sankho Chaudhary Award (2005- 06). Deepjyo-ti’s works were showcased at The India Art Fair 2012-2014 and the Dhaka Art Summit
2014 by Latitude 28. The artist currently lives and works in Baroda.
B.1982, Assam
SUDIPTADAS
B. 1985 Assam
Sudipta Das was born in Assam, in 1985. She did her BFA and MFA in painting from Kala Bhavan, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan 2009 and 2011 respectively. She had a solo show, ‘Break II’ at Gandhara Art Gallery in 2013. Recent group shows include ‘Diver-Cities’ curated by Bhavna Kakar, Latitude 28, (2013);
‘The Web of Water’ curated by Sandhya Gajjar, Artcore gallery Derby, UK (2013); ‘Fluid’ curated by V Divakar, in Site, Baroda; ‘Contested Terrain’, Kochi, (2013); ‘Art Virtual Real’, curated by Georgina
Maddox, Art Alive Gallery, (2012); Group show at Exhibit 320, curated by Ranjita Chaney (2012); ‘Her work is Never Done Part – II’, curated by Bose Krishnamachari, BMB Art Gallery, Bombay (2010). She participated in Kanoria Residency (2011); Saavad Residency, Santiniketan for 6 months (2011). She has
also received various Merit Scholarships from Visva Bharati and the Government of India. She currently has a studio in Baroda Space Studio.
“My present work refers to a diasporic memory which pertains to the partition of Bengal, thus addressing issues of cultural displacement and politi-cal turmoil. I attempt to interrogate several socio-political histories through the mangled imag-eries. The physical act of defacing creates new iden-tities. The Last Supper becomes the metaphor of an important historic event where I consciously replace the iconic characters with portraits of John Doe.”
Das deconstructs iconic signifiers of history in this work and transmits its fragments through a percep-tual, subjective lens before allowing them to contrib-ute to the baggage of history that penetrates our realities. History does not disappear in the face of the ‘new’, it comes to be reconstructed and lives on in the present and the future. Das reminds us that we endure the experience of the contemporary subjec-tively, while carrying with us the inheritance of a past that does not remain forgotten.
“The Purush & Prakriti are referred to as necessary companions for a harmonious co-existence according to our ancient philosophy. But even when one of them ceases to accompany the other, the other does not perish away in lonesome misery, rather continues to live nevertheless. Despite the inherent anthropomorphic need for intimacy we acclima-tize our desires according to our situations. In such a scenario it is our ego/the self that gives us the endurance to fulfill the basic human need to survive. On one hand our heart is deperate for union and co-exis-tence, on the other, it is silenced by a righteous self. The muddled imag-ery flashing on the screen is a signifier of the chaos that our mind expe-riences. They are not mere channels forecasting onscreen but are the
signifier of an internal turmoil prevailing in oneself.”
SCULPTING SPACE: PERCEPTUAL MULTISTABILITY AND SPATIAL PROTAGONISM IN THE WORK OF DILIP CHOBISAby Maya Kóvskaya, PhD
Dilip Chobisa’s oeuvre invokes a set of reflections on spatiality, its nature and subsequent effect on our preconceived notions of space. While space is often treated as a setting, in Chobisa’s work, space in unexpectedly transfigured into protagonist. Constructed through various angles, perspectives and composed by figures, shadows and depths, space is presented in dialogue
with lines and shapes to produce a visual field of “perceptual multistablity.”
The concept of perceptual multistability has a venerable usage in the analysis of both visual arts and cognitive science, as well as in the study of optical illusions. Its most referenced usage has been in connection with the works of Dutch lithographer M.C. Escher. Perceptual multistability occurs when structures, patterns and designs attain a level of ambiguity such that it is
difficult to view them as static and mono-vocal, i.e. subject to single, “unique” interpretive frameworks.
In Chobisa’s work, we can clearly see the ways in which a persistent pattern of perceptual multistability operates when one object is shown in relation to another, thereby creating the illusory sense of depth that is noticeable in many of Chobisa’s works. In fact, ironically and notably, it is not actual depth but visual interferences with our ability to perceive depth that
trigger the inversion of what are called “depth values” and thus play with our vision. For example, the contrast and juxtaposition of a wall or a room depicted in relation to another wall or room shown in the work adds to a complexity of perception as our gaze shifts from one end of the work to another and from one focal point to another. Think of the room of interlocking,
never-ending staircases in Escher’s work as an example. Yet while the Dutch great master’s work turned on perspective, Chobisa’s work dialogues with the visual experience of space.
Thus, in Chobisa’s study of spatiality, it is specifically depth that is visually presented to create a variety of interpretations. Distorting the static nature of space, suggestions of movement are expressed through the angles, shades and shadows of shapes and figures that frequently appear in Chobisa’s work, such as walls, windows, corners and other such architectural
objects/structures. The resulting optical illusion transfers to the viewer an illusory sense of depth from objects that are presented in a two-dimensional format, yet appear as though they were three-dimensional. In each of these works, new visual evocations can be formed as one looks at them closely, and again as one gazes askance. Given the inversion of depth values in relation to the spaces depicted, the perceptual multistability that is created by the movement of the eyes as we observe these works opens us up to the subjectification of spatial perception.
The meditations on space through subjectivity redefine spatiality in relationship to the way it is experienced by the viewer. But this is not to imply that space is simply a passive vector of the viewer’s subjective gaze. Indeed the opposite is so, for it is precisely the way in which depth values are inverted and space is destabilised within the work that accounts for the how perceptu-al multistability works. Space (as constituted by the artist through this visual sleight of hand) becomes the protagonist of these destabilised, subjective and multiple visual experiences. For example, while gazing at Chobisa’s works (most of which are “Untitled), this distorted sense of depth is stimulated visually by the interplay between space in its various manifestations in
the works: rooms that open into other (deeper) rooms, windows that lead to an unending void, and shades that contain shadows that accentuate perspective. The visual realm presented in Chobisa’s work thus becomes a mirror for reflecting space that has been organized objectively by the artist’s use of optical illusion techniques, yet leaves its impression on our depth
perception as it is stimulated anew through the interaction of our own subjectivity, the artist’s visual ruses and the resultant spatial protagonism that emerges.
The protagonism of space that Chobisa engenders, then, enables viewers to arrive at a juxtaposed view of the works taken together as shifting sets of different, yet similar wholes, depend-ing on the arrangement and order of viewing. Different spaces brought into being by the relationship among walls, windows and open passages allow us to put them in contrast with one
another as our point of view shifts from one perception of space to another. In these works, the subtle becomes prominent as space acquires shape and presence, and becomes a focal point through the inversion of depth values, as we perceive it in its various manifestations. In some instances, it is a solitary window leading to an unknown void, or a chequered floor reflected in and through the glass, while in others it is angular shadows reflected in different directions from walls that meet at corners that point to an above and below, that turn the composition of
Chobisa’s works into a relational play from which spatial protagonism emerges. In short, all the other elements in the work exist and interact as subordinate to (even as they are also necessary to) the constitution of in between spaces that emerge from their juxtapositioning. In this way, the contrast and interplay between encompassed and enclosed indoor spaces that elaborate openings in the form of quadrangular shapes, on the one hand, and prominent windows that lead to the representation of voids or unending open spaces, on the other hand,
work together to create a sense of dissonance and vertigo that makes us re- experience space through these works in which space itself (and spatiality as a condition, more generally) becomes the star of the show.
While Chobisa’s spaces that are often depicted as enclosed indoor settings, they transmit a sense of openness. Indeed, to engage Chobisa’s works is to travel within their inverted depths; to find movement in stillness and the appearance of three-dimensional objects within two-dimensional representations. The enclosure and demarcation of space through representations of geometric architectural structures (such as walls, doors, windows, floors and ceilings) recalibrates our multiple and differential experiences of “space as protagonist” through time-honored devices that product “perceptual multistability,” making the artist as much as “sculptor of space” working outside the boxes of ordinary perception, as he is an artist working “within the
frame” of commonplace dimensionality.
DILIP CHOBISA
B.1978
Born in 1978, Dilip Chobisa completed his BVA and MVA in Sculpture at the M.S. University, Baroda in 2002 and 2004 respectively. The artist presented solo exhibition, represented by Latitude 28 at the India Art Fair, 2012 and had another solo show ‘Silent Celebration’, Anant Art Gallery
(2010). His group shows and fairs include the Dhaka Art Summit 2014, represented by Latitude 28; ‘Diver|Cities I – Asian Contemporary Art’, by Latitude 28 and Art Cinnamon, Singapore (2012); ‘Fragile’, Paradox and 1x1 Gallery, Singapore (2012); Art Gwangju, represented by Latitude 28
(2012); Art Chennai, represented by Latitude 28 (2012); ‘In You is the Illusion of Each Day’, curated by Maya Kóvskaya, Latitude 28 (2011); Commonwealth Games Exhibition, New Delhi (2010); ‘Silent City’, Aicon Gallery, London (2010); ‘Size Matters or Does it?’, Latitude 28, New Delhi
(2010); ‘Immersions’, curated by Deeksha Nath, Anant Gallery, New Delhi (2009); ‘Keep Drawing’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2009); ‘SLICK 2008’, Aicon Art Gallery, London (2008); ‘Urgent: 10ml of Contemporary Needed’ presented by FICA, New Delhi (2008). ‘Instilling Life’, Hacienda
Art Gallery, Mumbai (2007); and ‘Keep Drawing’, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai (2007). Chobisa was awarded Emerging Artist of the Year by Harmony Foundation Award, Mumbai in 2008. The artist lives and works in Baroda.
NOSTALGIA 1,2 • 20145 x 5 feet| Graphite on paper, digital print on canvas, silk screen, thread, mixed media, painted wooden frame and acrylic glass |
EVERYTHING ENDS AND EVERYTHING MATTERSby Anindita Dutta
SPECIALPERFORMANCE
Self PortraitPerformance - used garden tools, wet French clay and myself, Print on archival paper, 41 x 97 inches2013
ANINDITA DUTTA @ LATITUDE 28 BOOTHThe photographic prints on display at the Latitude 28 Booth (booth number A2), are staged portraits of the artist. This is from a series of self-portraits that continue her persisting inquiry into psychological and emotional conflicts. This particular work tries to unravel the moment before the resolution of conflict. Here, the medium of photography is most appropriate in delineating a single moment in the experience of time, laden with all that tears the mind apart at that instant. Here she makes the connotations that clay has to life and death, its germinal force literal by wrapping the material around her body, allowing its textured surface to symbolize the psychological scars and indelible dents that we acquires along our destined paths. The presence of the gardening tool, is meta-phoric of the burying and digging, a process that we are constantly engaged in – introspection, grieving and eventually moving on.
Born in India, Anindita Dutta is a performance artist based in the USA who merges her extensive academic training in sculpture with her performances. The artist’s work at the India Art Fair 2014, where she is represented by Latitude 28 will be a three-day-long interactive
performance, which will be a celebration of the energy of life with its conflicts and struggles intact. She is also represented by Latitude 28 at The Dhaka Art Summit 2014. Her solo shows include ‘The Exit’, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India (2009); ‘The Exit’, Galerie 88,
Kolkata, India (2009); Maiden Lane Exhibition Space, New York (2007); Roger Smith Lab Gallery, New York, (2007); Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, Sparkil, New York (2007); and Project 88, Mumbai, India (2007). Her group shows include ‘Structures within an Intervention’, The Guild Art Gallery, New York (2010); Open Studio, International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York (2010); ‘All About Fukuoka’, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (2010); ‘Hotter Than Curry’, Gallery Open Eyed Dreams, Cochin (2009); ‘Contemporary India’, Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, MI (2009); ‘Easing Border’, Traveling show, New York (2008); and Material Dolorosa in Valparaiso, Chile (2008). She is a recipient of the Residency and Performance Grant supported by Dame Jillian Sackler International Artists Exhibition Program at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking
University, Beijing, China. She has also been awarded grants from the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan, 2010), The Pollock-Kras-ner Foundation (2008), Art Omi International Art Center (New York, 2006), UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries Fellowship (2006),
KHOJ Kolkata International Workshop (India, 2006) and CAMAC, Marnay-sur-seine (France, 2005).
LATITUDE 28’s commitment to experimental art practices in its geographical location has resulted in a video art project called ‘Contested Spaces’ curated by Bhavna Kakar at the India Art Fair 2014. The inquiries and concerns of the artists showcased here hope to penetrate fragments of contemporary realities in the way they manifest themselves in our turbulent times. These works variously reflect upon current socio-political, economic and personal crises in the way they linger in intimate experiences of the everyday. This project is a reflection of the gradual melting away of the duality of global verses local, laying the foundation for an eclectic and an all-embracing culture worldwide.
Featuring Claudia Joskowicz, Kartik Sood, Morgan Wong, Rodrigo Braga, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Sherman Ong, Taus Makhacheva, Tintin Wulia, Tony Chakar, Wael Shawky and Zafer Topaloglu.
Everything Ends and Everything Matters(Work in progress)
Round and Round and Consumed by Fire (2009)Vallegrande, 1967 (2008)Drawn and Quartered (2007)
CLAUDIA JOSKOWICZNew York / Bolivia
Claudia Joskowicz’s works seek to reawaken violent events and their residue from Bolivian history. The three videos presented here form a trilogy of videos based on events in Bolivian history and their effect on the country’s mytho-historic landscape. Round and Round and Consumed by Fire is a reenactment of the shootout and subsequent death of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, nineteenth century American outlaws and leaders of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. Vallegrande, 1967 reenacts the display of guerrilla combatant Che Guevara’s corpse for the media after his assassination by the Bolivian army in La Higuera in 1967. Drawn and Quartered is a recreation of a diorama on permanent exhibi-tion at the Museo Costumbrista in La Paz, Bolivia that depicts the execution of Tupac Katari, a leader in the rebellions of indigenous people in Bolivia who was executed by the Spanish colonialists in 1781. These videos highlight Bolivian history and the advent of Spanish colonialism and then neoliberal colonialism that have entangled Bolivia.
Morgan Wong was born in Hong Kong and is currently based there. His works have been exhibited in museums and art spaces in Asia, America, Australia and Europe, including Tate Modern, UK (2010), Milan Triennale Design Museum (2011) and the Hong Kong Museum of Art (2008).
In Plus-Minus-Zero when we see the artist walking backwards and anti-clockwise, in order to reverse time, and turn the ‘clock’ back 56 minutes and 6 seconds, we can only reflect on the pointless attempt of traveling through time, and in the process bring closer Hong Kong and Sapporo, by vanishing the time difference between the two places.
Frustration of Having More than Two Choices to Make in Life is a video work produced after and based on Wong’s intensive meditative days of isolation from the world but only situating himself with a steel bar and a hand file in an empty space.
MORGAN WONG Hong Kong
Frustration of Having More than Two Choices to Make in Life (2013)Plus-Minus-Zero (2010)
Breaking of a Dream (2012-2013)
New Delhi / Baroda
KARTIK SOOD
Kartik Sood’s works create an interface with the element of 'time' - preserving the past and mapping cultural metamorphosis - as Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag and others have argued - any moment captured by the camera is a moment past a tiny increment of lived time preserved against eternity. His multiple protagonists, testimonies of personal rever-ences, get enlivened and illuminated through the technological 'heart strings' forming quiet images of contemplation; but soon revealing an enigmatic, disquieting nature.In Breaking of a Dream, Sood portrays surreal, blurred, distorted faces to tell a tale of memory, loss and how these affect our perception of reality. Reality is perception he seems to say. The world, here, appears a dark one, an intensely expressionist, secretive space where the warmth of birth and the ice of death are not so different. Even when the artist works with other media, he creates a centerpiece video around the stories and the rest follows thereafter, making video work an integral part of the artists’ practice. Kartik is currently a resident at Gasworks as a recipient of the The Inlaks Shivadasani Foundation and The Charles Wallace India Trust Award.
Curated by
Bhavna Kakar
SpacesContested
4:30 pm30th January
SCREENINGS
30th January 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
31st January 1:00 pm – 8:00 pm
1st February 3:00 pm – 8:00 pm
2nd February 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm
For Anindita Dutta, the most consuming junctures in the journey of life are its moments of conflict. Whether they ultimately reach resolution or otherwise, psychological conflict in the individual is what causes her most distress, and at the same time drives her work. The making of the work then becomes a meditative experience for her, being able to temporarily shift her conflicted state of mind onto a tangible entity, crystalizing the inner torment of life’s struggles into a work of art. Clay is a medium that has been influential in the artist’s oeuvre. The malleability and fluidity of the material, its texture, and connotations that link it to creation myths, all gather various meanings in the artist’s relationship with wet clay. The works route one to the primal force of nature, the phenomenological qualities of life and the human experience. Collating sculpture and performance, the artist treats transient experiences as our lens into the truths of the ever-constant universe.
In her performance work at the India Art Fair, 2014, Everything Ends and Everything Matters, the artist engages with a massive spiral structure made of iron and fibreglass. Usually working with found surfaces of smaller dimensions, this ambitious work would be the first time that the artist is interacting with a structure constructed specifically for one of her performances. Towering to a height of 9 feet, the artist begins with the basic structure, and applies wet clay, her signature medium all over the inner and outer surfaces of the spiral structure, over which her drawings would be inscribed. Once the walls are covered with drawings the crucial part of the performance begins on 30 January. For the collaborative performance on this day, she has sought the assistance of 6 graduates of the National School of Drama. Together, the group will interact with each other within the space of the spiral in an emotional, intuitive and exhila-rating process, charged with the energy we radiate in our daily human interactions. The activity within those narrow corridors of the spiral structure would leave its impression on the wet clay walls, altering and overwriting the artist’s original drawings in unpredictable ways, and the aura of energy collectively generated by the performers would resonate in that space for the days to come. Visitors at the fair are invited into the spiral maze to witness the visual remnants of the performance and exchange energies with the space, contributing to the work by altering its meta-physics in their own unique ways.
The spiral, as an architectural structure has historical significance as one of the oldest geometric shapes in artworks since ancient times. Besides these primitive associations, for Anindita, the spiral signifies the never-ending cycle of life and death, and everything in between. The impermanence of life, living with this reality staring one in the face, is an aspect that the artist reflects upon. The specific and elusive ways in which the brevity translates into all aspects of life is what she is trying to capture. Towards this end, her use of clay as the medium and the use of performance as a format, remain key aspects.
Clay, is the beginning and end of life. It symbolises the material nature of human bodily existence – we are all made of matter and we dissolve into matter at the end of our lives. The use of clay in this work, stages an encounter for the spectator with the forces of life and death. Despite this ultimate and assured fate, what overwhelm the journey of life are the transient emotions that flow in and out. Here performance becomes instrumental in displaying that fleeting-ness, contributing to the flux of joys, sorrows and much more complex psychic states that eclipse our lived experienc-es. These physical, emotional and instinctual responses in the individual, and their energies are made obvious by the performative aspect of the work. The sculptural structure in clay, catches them in flight, and preserves them in a visual and tactile language, leaving the viewer to decipher personal meanings from this visceral text. by Anushka Rajendran
EVERYTHING ENDS AND EVERYTHING MATTERSby Anindita Dutta
SPECIALPERFORMANCE
Self PortraitPerformance - used garden tools, wet French clay and myself, Print on archival paper, 41 x 97 inches2013
ANINDITA DUTTA @ LATITUDE 28 BOOTHThe photographic prints on display at the Latitude 28 Booth (booth number A2), are staged portraits of the artist. This is from a series of self-portraits that continue her persisting inquiry into psychological and emotional conflicts. This particular work tries to unravel the moment before the resolution of conflict. Here, the medium of photography is most appropriate in delineating a single moment in the experience of time, laden with all that tears the mind apart at that instant. Here she makes the connotations that clay has to life and death, its germinal force literal by wrapping the material around her body, allowing its textured surface to symbolize the psychological scars and indelible dents that we acquires along our destined paths. The presence of the gardening tool, is meta-phoric of the burying and digging, a process that we are constantly engaged in – introspection, grieving and eventually moving on.
Born in India, Anindita Dutta is a performance artist based in the USA who merges her extensive academic training in sculpture with her performances. The artist’s work at the India Art Fair 2014, where she is represented by Latitude 28 will be a three-day-long interactive
performance, which will be a celebration of the energy of life with its conflicts and struggles intact. She is also represented by Latitude 28 at The Dhaka Art Summit 2014. Her solo shows include ‘The Exit’, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India (2009); ‘The Exit’, Galerie 88,
Kolkata, India (2009); Maiden Lane Exhibition Space, New York (2007); Roger Smith Lab Gallery, New York, (2007); Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, Sparkil, New York (2007); and Project 88, Mumbai, India (2007). Her group shows include ‘Structures within an Intervention’, The Guild Art Gallery, New York (2010); Open Studio, International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York (2010); ‘All About Fukuoka’, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (2010); ‘Hotter Than Curry’, Gallery Open Eyed Dreams, Cochin (2009); ‘Contemporary India’, Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, MI (2009); ‘Easing Border’, Traveling show, New York (2008); and Material Dolorosa in Valparaiso, Chile (2008). She is a recipient of the Residency and Performance Grant supported by Dame Jillian Sackler International Artists Exhibition Program at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking
University, Beijing, China. She has also been awarded grants from the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan, 2010), The Pollock-Kras-ner Foundation (2008), Art Omi International Art Center (New York, 2006), UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries Fellowship (2006),
KHOJ Kolkata International Workshop (India, 2006) and CAMAC, Marnay-sur-seine (France, 2005).
LATITUDE 28’s commitment to experimental art practices in its geographical location has resulted in a video art project called ‘Contested Spaces’ curated by Bhavna Kakar at the India Art Fair 2014. The inquiries and concerns of the artists showcased here hope to penetrate fragments of contemporary realities in the way they manifest themselves in our turbulent times. These works variously reflect upon current socio-political, economic and personal crises in the way they linger in intimate experiences of the everyday. This project is a reflection of the gradual melting away of the duality of global verses local, laying the foundation for an eclectic and an all-embracing culture worldwide.
Featuring Claudia Joskowicz, Kartik Sood, Morgan Wong, Rodrigo Braga, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Sherman Ong, Taus Makhacheva, Tintin Wulia, Tony Chakar, Wael Shawky and Zafer Topaloglu.
Everything Ends and Everything Matters(Work in progress)
Round and Round and Consumed by Fire (2009)Vallegrande, 1967 (2008)Drawn and Quartered (2007)
CLAUDIA JOSKOWICZNew York / Bolivia
Claudia Joskowicz’s works seek to reawaken violent events and their residue from Bolivian history. The three videos presented here form a trilogy of videos based on events in Bolivian history and their effect on the country’s mytho-historic landscape. Round and Round and Consumed by Fire is a reenactment of the shootout and subsequent death of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, nineteenth century American outlaws and leaders of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. Vallegrande, 1967 reenacts the display of guerrilla combatant Che Guevara’s corpse for the media after his assassination by the Bolivian army in La Higuera in 1967. Drawn and Quartered is a recreation of a diorama on permanent exhibi-tion at the Museo Costumbrista in La Paz, Bolivia that depicts the execution of Tupac Katari, a leader in the rebellions of indigenous people in Bolivia who was executed by the Spanish colonialists in 1781. These videos highlight Bolivian history and the advent of Spanish colonialism and then neoliberal colonialism that have entangled Bolivia.
Morgan Wong was born in Hong Kong and is currently based there. His works have been exhibited in museums and art spaces in Asia, America, Australia and Europe, including Tate Modern, UK (2010), Milan Triennale Design Museum (2011) and the Hong Kong Museum of Art (2008).
In Plus-Minus-Zero when we see the artist walking backwards and anti-clockwise, in order to reverse time, and turn the ‘clock’ back 56 minutes and 6 seconds, we can only reflect on the pointless attempt of traveling through time, and in the process bring closer Hong Kong and Sapporo, by vanishing the time difference between the two places.
Frustration of Having More than Two Choices to Make in Life is a video work produced after and based on Wong’s intensive meditative days of isolation from the world but only situating himself with a steel bar and a hand file in an empty space.
MORGAN WONG Hong Kong
Frustration of Having More than Two Choices to Make in Life (2013)Plus-Minus-Zero (2010)
Breaking of a Dream (2012-2013)
New Delhi / Baroda
KARTIK SOOD
Kartik Sood’s works create an interface with the element of 'time' - preserving the past and mapping cultural metamorphosis - as Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag and others have argued - any moment captured by the camera is a moment past a tiny increment of lived time preserved against eternity. His multiple protagonists, testimonies of personal rever-ences, get enlivened and illuminated through the technological 'heart strings' forming quiet images of contemplation; but soon revealing an enigmatic, disquieting nature.In Breaking of a Dream, Sood portrays surreal, blurred, distorted faces to tell a tale of memory, loss and how these affect our perception of reality. Reality is perception he seems to say. The world, here, appears a dark one, an intensely expressionist, secretive space where the warmth of birth and the ice of death are not so different. Even when the artist works with other media, he creates a centerpiece video around the stories and the rest follows thereafter, making video work an integral part of the artists’ practice. Kartik is currently a resident at Gasworks as a recipient of the The Inlaks Shivadasani Foundation and The Charles Wallace India Trust Award.
Curated by
Bhavna Kakar
SpacesContested
4:30 pm30th January
SCREENINGS
30th January 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
31st January 1:00 pm – 8:00 pm
1st February 3:00 pm – 8:00 pm
2nd February 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm
For Anindita Dutta, the most consuming junctures in the journey of life are its moments of conflict. Whether they ultimately reach resolution or otherwise, psychological conflict in the individual is what causes her most distress, and at the same time drives her work. The making of the work then becomes a meditative experience for her, being able to temporarily shift her conflicted state of mind onto a tangible entity, crystalizing the inner torment of life’s struggles into a work of art. Clay is a medium that has been influential in the artist’s oeuvre. The malleability and fluidity of the material, its texture, and connotations that link it to creation myths, all gather various meanings in the artist’s relationship with wet clay. The works route one to the primal force of nature, the phenomenological qualities of life and the human experience. Collating sculpture and performance, the artist treats transient experiences as our lens into the truths of the ever-constant universe.
In her performance work at the India Art Fair, 2014, Everything Ends and Everything Matters, the artist engages with a massive spiral structure made of iron and fibreglass. Usually working with found surfaces of smaller dimensions, this ambitious work would be the first time that the artist is interacting with a structure constructed specifically for one of her performances. Towering to a height of 9 feet, the artist begins with the basic structure, and applies wet clay, her signature medium all over the inner and outer surfaces of the spiral structure, over which her drawings would be inscribed. Once the walls are covered with drawings the crucial part of the performance begins on 30 January. For the collaborative performance on this day, she has sought the assistance of 6 graduates of the National School of Drama. Together, the group will interact with each other within the space of the spiral in an emotional, intuitive and exhila-rating process, charged with the energy we radiate in our daily human interactions. The activity within those narrow corridors of the spiral structure would leave its impression on the wet clay walls, altering and overwriting the artist’s original drawings in unpredictable ways, and the aura of energy collectively generated by the performers would resonate in that space for the days to come. Visitors at the fair are invited into the spiral maze to witness the visual remnants of the performance and exchange energies with the space, contributing to the work by altering its meta-physics in their own unique ways.
The spiral, as an architectural structure has historical significance as one of the oldest geometric shapes in artworks since ancient times. Besides these primitive associations, for Anindita, the spiral signifies the never-ending cycle of life and death, and everything in between. The impermanence of life, living with this reality staring one in the face, is an aspect that the artist reflects upon. The specific and elusive ways in which the brevity translates into all aspects of life is what she is trying to capture. Towards this end, her use of clay as the medium and the use of performance as a format, remain key aspects.
Clay, is the beginning and end of life. It symbolises the material nature of human bodily existence – we are all made of matter and we dissolve into matter at the end of our lives. The use of clay in this work, stages an encounter for the spectator with the forces of life and death. Despite this ultimate and assured fate, what overwhelm the journey of life are the transient emotions that flow in and out. Here performance becomes instrumental in displaying that fleeting-ness, contributing to the flux of joys, sorrows and much more complex psychic states that eclipse our lived experienc-es. These physical, emotional and instinctual responses in the individual, and their energies are made obvious by the performative aspect of the work. The sculptural structure in clay, catches them in flight, and preserves them in a visual and tactile language, leaving the viewer to decipher personal meanings from this visceral text. by Anushka Rajendran
RODRIGO BRAGA
Front forms part of a series titled More Force Than Necessary (2010) that Braga created during a residency at the Flanders Field Museum in Ypres (Belgium).
Front shows Sandbag Soldier, a recurring figure in Braga’s videos, involved in a face off with another soldier until the moment Sandbag is forced to lower his gaze. He is faced with a virtual enemy who does not react. During the three minutes before he finally loses, the concentration he maintains allows us to see various expressions appear on his face like impatience, anger, disbelief or humiliation. This work connects to Rodrigo´s corpus of works, where the artist asserts his own body as a territory for the conflicts around the individual in the world, just as he is the skin simultaneously separating and promoting encounters in the fields of the intimate and the public.
Brazil
Oracle (2009)
Sebastian Diaz’s videos wave between a passion for documentary investigation – which comes partly from the spectacular nature of his homeland, Patagonia – and an amazing talent for spontaneous narrative, which is both fantastical and steeped in utopian yearning. Oracle alternates a series of apparently random images that are not linked one to the other. They just follow on, like the tesserae in a mosaic that is still to be completed. The title seems to allude to the tradition of the Greek Oracle as a source of wisdom and prophecy, capable of offering a vision of the future through a combination of elements from the present. A plastic bag moved by the wind, a solitary man staring at the sea, and a solar eclipse are just some of the images that appear on the screen as propitiatory signs, and with which the audience can create their own free response writes Cecilia Alemani on his work.
Sherman Ong is a photographer and award-winning filmmaker whose practice has always centred on the human condition and the individual’s relationships with others within a larger socio-cultural milieu.
Motherland is an ongoing project that deals with the migration of peoples. Singapore is a city-state with one of the highest concentrations of people – and of millionaires – in the world. The city also has a magnetic attraction for immigrants, many of whom come from China. Some have lived in the region for generations now and no longer speak their original language. Here, through a series of short films, Ong explores the daily realities of migrants, their quotidian experiences, of trauma or their aspirations are woven through with moments of absurd fantasy and choreo-graphed dance sequences.
Malaysia / Singapore
Amsterdam / Argentina
Bullet (2010)
Taus Makhacheva has participated in a number of Russian and international exhibi-tions including the 4th Biennale of Contemporary Art in Baku, Azerbaijan (2009); History of Russian Video Art, Volume 3 at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010) and the 4th Moscow Biennale (2011) among others. Bullet is based on an incident that occurred in the artists’ hometown of Makhachkala where three police-men were shot dead near her home while Makhacheva was on a flight home from Moscow. The work turned out to be reflection of this. She writes, “what can this work be about, when shot in such context? I shoot into the sand with a “Makarov”, the service gun of the local police. As soon as I take the gun, I feel that it is an instrument. I ask my cameraman to move away, being scared that the bullet might ricochet. I shoot, blow-back, sound, crater in the sand. As I start digging I realise that the crater was only on the surface, so it is impossible to distinguish the trajectory of the bullet and I need to dig at random. By the time I find a bullet I have fired away almost the whole magazine. I leave a big hole behind. All the other bullets, which I couldn’t find, stayed somewhere on the beach near the city of Makhachkala.”
TAUS MAKHACHEVA
TINTIN WULIAFallen (2011)
Trained as a composer, architect and artist Tintin’s works reflect on the human condition of the geopolitical border within the imbalanced and unfinished processes of globalization, on universally relevant ideas of mobility and identity. Tintin’s works have been shown in major international exhibitions like the Istanbul Biennial, Yokohama Triennial, Moscow Biennale, Jakarta Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennial and the Sharjah Biennale, among others.
Fallen is part of the body of works on border and chance. It is neither documenta-tion nor a documentary, although it was based on a somewhat real event. Following the path of skepticism that the real event was based on, the documentation is dramatized: it is heavily edited, and lightly presented with enchanting music. The video plays in an eternal loop, and it is the impossibility of charting a sequence of events, for the viewer who might chance upon the video at any given point of time in its loop, that challenges ideas of what is time and objective realities. The sequence of images and sounds gradually builds into becoming a solid conceptual object that leaves the space where it originates, and occupies another space that is more than four-dimensional.
Moscow / London
Indonesia / Australia
Egypt
Speak Mouthless (2012)
Beirut based Tony Chakar is a Lebanese artist, architect and writer whose work incorporates literature, philosophy and theory. Speak Mouthless was first presented at a workshop entitled “Translating Revolutions” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin). In this video, he comments on the interest European cultural institutions displayed for the Arab Spring, and how over time discourse around it has waned and the conversation has shifted to radical Islam, the fears of minori-ties and chemical weapons.
TONY CHAKARLebanon
Feel this Moment (2013)
Zafer Topaloglu videos follow a documentary style aesthetically, while his narratives are more poetic. The format of the video essay allows him to throw into question the nuances of social and cultural contexts. His work deals with the polemics of power, political violence, emotional and physical vulnerability of the ‘other’ and pain. Feel this Moment questions the tourist gaze that adds every point it looks upon to the collective image culture, which it shallowly reproduces and consumes, and experi-ences are lived via this culture. The touristic gaze creates a sort of fantasy experience and ways of perception through which the representation of places, histories and peoples are transmuted, and it is that gaze that is explored through this video.
ZAFER TOPALOGLUTurkey / Rotterdam
WAEL SHAWKYLarvae Channel 2 (2009)
Wael Shawky was born Alexandria, and studied fine art at the University of Alexandria before receiving his M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. He is a distinguished video artist and has shown his works at prominent Biennales around the world and recently at Documenta 13, Kassel.
Taken from Shawky’s Larvae Channel series, a multi-screen installation, Larvae Channel 2 was produced using rotoscope animation, whereby live-action is filmed and then re-traced, frame-by-frame. Larvae Channel 2 is a complex translation of human concerns and conditions - the film follows an elderly Palestinian couple in the Souf refugee camp near Amman, Jordan, who speak about their forced displacement from their home in the West Bank. Here, the couple adopts a nationalistic language, borrowed from the media, through which they position themselves in an ongoing narrative of struggle. In this video, the daily trials and tribulations faced by the couple are inscribed onto the film’s material form, offering itself up as a self-reflexive inquiry into the ways in which the camera can act as an agent of testimony.
Front (2010)
RODRIGO BRAGA
Front forms part of a series titled More Force Than Necessary (2010) that Braga created during a residency at the Flanders Field Museum in Ypres (Belgium).
Front shows Sandbag Soldier, a recurring figure in Braga’s videos, involved in a face off with another soldier until the moment Sandbag is forced to lower his gaze. He is faced with a virtual enemy who does not react. During the three minutes before he finally loses, the concentration he maintains allows us to see various expressions appear on his face like impatience, anger, disbelief or humiliation. This work connects to Rodrigo´s corpus of works, where the artist asserts his own body as a territory for the conflicts around the individual in the world, just as he is the skin simultaneously separating and promoting encounters in the fields of the intimate and the public.
Brazil
Oracle (2009)
Sebastian Diaz’s videos wave between a passion for documentary investigation – which comes partly from the spectacular nature of his homeland, Patagonia – and an amazing talent for spontaneous narrative, which is both fantastical and steeped in utopian yearning. Oracle alternates a series of apparently random images that are not linked one to the other. They just follow on, like the tesserae in a mosaic that is still to be completed. The title seems to allude to the tradition of the Greek Oracle as a source of wisdom and prophecy, capable of offering a vision of the future through a combination of elements from the present. A plastic bag moved by the wind, a solitary man staring at the sea, and a solar eclipse are just some of the images that appear on the screen as propitiatory signs, and with which the audience can create their own free response writes Cecilia Alemani on his work.
Sherman Ong is a photographer and award-winning filmmaker whose practice has always centred on the human condition and the individual’s relationships with others within a larger socio-cultural milieu.
Motherland is an ongoing project that deals with the migration of peoples. Singapore is a city-state with one of the highest concentrations of people – and of millionaires – in the world. The city also has a magnetic attraction for immigrants, many of whom come from China. Some have lived in the region for generations now and no longer speak their original language. Here, through a series of short films, Ong explores the daily realities of migrants, their quotidian experiences, of trauma or their aspirations are woven through with moments of absurd fantasy and choreo-graphed dance sequences.
Malaysia / Singapore
Amsterdam / Argentina
Bullet (2010)
Taus Makhacheva has participated in a number of Russian and international exhibi-tions including the 4th Biennale of Contemporary Art in Baku, Azerbaijan (2009); History of Russian Video Art, Volume 3 at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010) and the 4th Moscow Biennale (2011) among others. Bullet is based on an incident that occurred in the artists’ hometown of Makhachkala where three police-men were shot dead near her home while Makhacheva was on a flight home from Moscow. The work turned out to be reflection of this. She writes, “what can this work be about, when shot in such context? I shoot into the sand with a “Makarov”, the service gun of the local police. As soon as I take the gun, I feel that it is an instrument. I ask my cameraman to move away, being scared that the bullet might ricochet. I shoot, blow-back, sound, crater in the sand. As I start digging I realise that the crater was only on the surface, so it is impossible to distinguish the trajectory of the bullet and I need to dig at random. By the time I find a bullet I have fired away almost the whole magazine. I leave a big hole behind. All the other bullets, which I couldn’t find, stayed somewhere on the beach near the city of Makhachkala.”
TAUS MAKHACHEVA
TINTIN WULIAFallen (2011)
Trained as a composer, architect and artist Tintin’s works reflect on the human condition of the geopolitical border within the imbalanced and unfinished processes of globalization, on universally relevant ideas of mobility and identity. Tintin’s works have been shown in major international exhibitions like the Istanbul Biennial, Yokohama Triennial, Moscow Biennale, Jakarta Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennial and the Sharjah Biennale, among others.
Fallen is part of the body of works on border and chance. It is neither documenta-tion nor a documentary, although it was based on a somewhat real event. Following the path of skepticism that the real event was based on, the documentation is dramatized: it is heavily edited, and lightly presented with enchanting music. The video plays in an eternal loop, and it is the impossibility of charting a sequence of events, for the viewer who might chance upon the video at any given point of time in its loop, that challenges ideas of what is time and objective realities. The sequence of images and sounds gradually builds into becoming a solid conceptual object that leaves the space where it originates, and occupies another space that is more than four-dimensional.
Moscow / London
Indonesia / Australia
Egypt
Speak Mouthless (2012)
Beirut based Tony Chakar is a Lebanese artist, architect and writer whose work incorporates literature, philosophy and theory. Speak Mouthless was first presented at a workshop entitled “Translating Revolutions” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin). In this video, he comments on the interest European cultural institutions displayed for the Arab Spring, and how over time discourse around it has waned and the conversation has shifted to radical Islam, the fears of minori-ties and chemical weapons.
TONY CHAKARLebanon
Feel this Moment (2013)
Zafer Topaloglu videos follow a documentary style aesthetically, while his narratives are more poetic. The format of the video essay allows him to throw into question the nuances of social and cultural contexts. His work deals with the polemics of power, political violence, emotional and physical vulnerability of the ‘other’ and pain. Feel this Moment questions the tourist gaze that adds every point it looks upon to the collective image culture, which it shallowly reproduces and consumes, and experi-ences are lived via this culture. The touristic gaze creates a sort of fantasy experience and ways of perception through which the representation of places, histories and peoples are transmuted, and it is that gaze that is explored through this video.
ZAFER TOPALOGLUTurkey / Rotterdam
WAEL SHAWKYLarvae Channel 2 (2009)
Wael Shawky was born Alexandria, and studied fine art at the University of Alexandria before receiving his M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. He is a distinguished video artist and has shown his works at prominent Biennales around the world and recently at Documenta 13, Kassel.
Taken from Shawky’s Larvae Channel series, a multi-screen installation, Larvae Channel 2 was produced using rotoscope animation, whereby live-action is filmed and then re-traced, frame-by-frame. Larvae Channel 2 is a complex translation of human concerns and conditions - the film follows an elderly Palestinian couple in the Souf refugee camp near Amman, Jordan, who speak about their forced displacement from their home in the West Bank. Here, the couple adopts a nationalistic language, borrowed from the media, through which they position themselves in an ongoing narrative of struggle. In this video, the daily trials and tribulations faced by the couple are inscribed onto the film’s material form, offering itself up as a self-reflexive inquiry into the ways in which the camera can act as an agent of testimony.
Front (2010)
Bhavna Kakar presents
CURATED BYNANCY ADAJANIA
1/2/14 - 5/3/14
A LEXICON OF WHAT IT’S ABOUT AND WHAT IT’S NOT
Ambivalence
The title of this exhibition encodes a moment of typographical uncertainty. If you were to type the word ‘sacred’, the computer often auto-corrects it to ‘scared’. Is this an accident or is it symptomatic of a deep anxiety and debilitating ambivalence of our times? In liberal circles, and especial-ly in the art field, the sacred is regarded with a measure of healthy scepticism and bracketed within forbidding connotations. Often, it is relegated to the domain of ancient or traditional art, where it can be domesticated within a tradition of pedago-gy and interpretation. Or then, it is seen as a source of inspiration for certain kinds of abstractionist tendencies within the regional modernism that developed in this country between the 1950s and the 1980s; here, too, the sacred can be tamed within the discourse of a self-reflexive modernism appropriating impulses from the past into its dynamic present.
Organized Religion
Most typically, the sacred is reductively identified with the dogmas of organized religion. In this vein it can also, and misleadingly, be conflated with an aggres-sive revanchist ideology based on the politicization of religious identity. The justified antipathy that the liberal and secular intelligentsia, artists among them, harbour towards such an ideology – with its attendant threats of violence, censorship and an authoritarian world-view that suppresses diversity – can all too often translate as a thoroughgoing rejection of the sacred.
Resistance
However, the sacred continues to resist all such categorizations. It cannot be reduced to dogma or conflated with an ideology of politicised religiosity. This exhibition addresses the rhetorical, ludic and perfor-mative strategies through which artists have accounted for the sacred as it leaks into the world, and the social, cultural, political and psychic domains that it inhabits. This
exhibition embraces the various and some-times contradictory gestures by which the sacred may be approached. It is phrased as an inquiry, and raises questions that are not asked for fear that one may be misunder-stood, or for reasons of self-censorship. It investigates the substrata of a condition that is both elusive and present; that is claimed by numerous public manifestations yet remains intimate, unclaimable, pluriform.
Memory
I have gathered together a varied typology of materials here, ranging from paintings, photographs, films and videos, through mixed-media works and sculpture, to children’s drawings. Discreet reproductions, incorporated into the flow of the exhibition as pedagogic annotations, are intended to prompt the viewer into an awareness of the unacknowledged histories of Indo-Iberian modernism (Angelo da Fonseca) or the epiphanic re-reading of a contemporary work that appears to have settled into a stable interpretation of the artist’s work (Sudhir Patwardhan).
Colloquies with the Icon
The icon is the most readily available and widely accessible interface with the sacred. And yet, given its location within a body of rituals and a system of ceremonial, the icon can paradoxically become remote from the world of affect that the worshipper inhabits. N Pushpamala, Angelo da Fonseca and Veer Munshi approach the icon from distinctive ideological commitments, but all of them hold colloquy with the icon. They reclaim the icon for the world of affect and criticality, for the circulations of human tribulation and exaltation, using humour, wisdom, wit and emotional tenderness.
Exorcising Phantoms
The sacred can manifest itself through troubling, repressed fragments that refuse to be assimilated into a coherent narrative of selfhood. The phantoms of the sacred can generate anxiety, vertigo, delirium and terror. They threaten the self ’s stability and consistency; they prompt a questioning of religious and ethnic foundation myths; they decoy the self into pursuing them in various
directions. Tyeb Mehta, Tushar Joag and Gargi Raina conduct courageous inquiries into the pivotal role that the phantoms of the sacred play in India’s charged social and political climate, where communities that have lived together in peace for generations can be manipulated at shockingly short notice into annihilating one another.
Sensing Allegory
Allegory is narrative travelling in disguise, in camouflage. Its surface lends itself to reading while its depths are hidden by encryption; but often, the key to the code is left lying in plain sight. Sudhir Patward-han’s paintings evoke the life of the small town or shanty, coping with the crises of late-industrial society. Looking closely, however, we are sometimes intrigued, then amazed to find that his protagonists might engage one another in the manner of figures in a Gothic altarpiece or a painting from the Northern Renaissance, and their local gestures and costumes conceal scenes from the life of Christ. Without warning, the viewer will find that a dystopian late-in-dustrial townscape yields up a parable about hope lost, redemption deferred, and people driven into a spiritual wilderness. Jehangir Jani works with fragmentary, episodic elements of Arabic calligraphy and the symbols of Shi’a history, allusively indicating the liminal state that the secular-ized artist occupies, between what he calls ‘the architecture of belief ’ and the gram-mar of abstraction.
Afterlife
The afterlife is a vital element of the sacred. A tradition of philosophical inquiry might migrate from the circles of debate in which it arose, and find habitation on alien shores. A saint-poet’s presence may continue after her physical extinction, in the form of a circulating corpus of poems carried into the future by the voices of disciples, so that the presence becomes the voice, relayed, echo-ing, memorized, found again in translation. And in funerary art, whether the Pharaonic tombs or the Faiyum portraits, the afterlife is that fascinating awareness of the strength, beauty and energy of those who are no longer living, encountered through memori-al gestures.
Prajakta Palav’s additive social project – which is a new departure from the painterly practice for which she is known – crystallis-es around the poems of the saint-poet Bahinabai, which she shares with school children, eliciting their responses through the drawn and painted image. Kartik
Sood’s paintings act like prayers for the dead: even as their bodies return to the elements, the memory of all that inspired them is embodied through lyrical evocation.
Strange and Sublime Addresses
The body is a costume for states of trans-formation; Sahej Rahal, acting in shamanic mode, tempts an unidentified totem crea-ture or spirit animal to break the cover of civility mandated by social life. Rohini Devasher, drawing on the astronomer’s expertise, invokes what Walter Benjamin described as the aura, the simultaneity of intimacy and distance, through her mythic, abstract topographies. Gigi Scaria dedicates himself to the earth’s last uninhabited expanses, or to landscapes violated by industry, where the human being can only be a survivor, a recipient of visions of the vastness yet also the fragility of the universe. In such avatars does the ecological Sublime, the post-industrial Sublime mani-fest itself, exposing the viewer to heightened conditions of strangeness, disorientation and terror.
This exhibition proposes that the sacred is not a pre-ordained and pre-shaped entity. It is an auratic, liminal condition, a tantalizing horizon and a place where you find yourself without looking for it.
*[An extract from the curatorial essay by Nancy Adajania]
L: Detail of Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-1516): sculpted parts by Niclaus of Haguenau and paintings by Matthias Grünewald
R: Sudhir Patwardhan, Bylanes Saga, 2007
Pushpamala N (And Clare Arni), Our Lady of Velankanni, Type C-Print on Metallic Paper, 20 x 24 inches, 2000-2004
Angelo da Fonseca (1902-1967), Flight to Egypt, Watercolour on paper, 12 x 16 inches, 1959, Image courtesy Xavier Centre of Historical Research (XCHR)
(above) Tyeb Mehta , Koodal, Film, 1970, Produced byFilms Division
(below) Tushar Joag, 3 Bullets for Gandhi, Single channelvideo, 5 min 2 sec, 2007
Kartik Sood, Love Never Dies a Natural Death, 2013
Bhavna Kakar presents
CURATED BYNANCY ADAJANIA
1/2/14 - 5/3/14
A LEXICON OF WHAT IT’S ABOUT AND WHAT IT’S NOT
Ambivalence
The title of this exhibition encodes a moment of typographical uncertainty. If you were to type the word ‘sacred’, the computer often auto-corrects it to ‘scared’. Is this an accident or is it symptomatic of a deep anxiety and debilitating ambivalence of our times? In liberal circles, and especial-ly in the art field, the sacred is regarded with a measure of healthy scepticism and bracketed within forbidding connotations. Often, it is relegated to the domain of ancient or traditional art, where it can be domesticated within a tradition of pedago-gy and interpretation. Or then, it is seen as a source of inspiration for certain kinds of abstractionist tendencies within the regional modernism that developed in this country between the 1950s and the 1980s; here, too, the sacred can be tamed within the discourse of a self-reflexive modernism appropriating impulses from the past into its dynamic present.
Organized Religion
Most typically, the sacred is reductively identified with the dogmas of organized religion. In this vein it can also, and misleadingly, be conflated with an aggres-sive revanchist ideology based on the politicization of religious identity. The justified antipathy that the liberal and secular intelligentsia, artists among them, harbour towards such an ideology – with its attendant threats of violence, censorship and an authoritarian world-view that suppresses diversity – can all too often translate as a thoroughgoing rejection of the sacred.
Resistance
However, the sacred continues to resist all such categorizations. It cannot be reduced to dogma or conflated with an ideology of politicised religiosity. This exhibition addresses the rhetorical, ludic and perfor-mative strategies through which artists have accounted for the sacred as it leaks into the world, and the social, cultural, political and psychic domains that it inhabits. This
exhibition embraces the various and some-times contradictory gestures by which the sacred may be approached. It is phrased as an inquiry, and raises questions that are not asked for fear that one may be misunder-stood, or for reasons of self-censorship. It investigates the substrata of a condition that is both elusive and present; that is claimed by numerous public manifestations yet remains intimate, unclaimable, pluriform.
Memory
I have gathered together a varied typology of materials here, ranging from paintings, photographs, films and videos, through mixed-media works and sculpture, to children’s drawings. Discreet reproductions, incorporated into the flow of the exhibition as pedagogic annotations, are intended to prompt the viewer into an awareness of the unacknowledged histories of Indo-Iberian modernism (Angelo da Fonseca) or the epiphanic re-reading of a contemporary work that appears to have settled into a stable interpretation of the artist’s work (Sudhir Patwardhan).
Colloquies with the Icon
The icon is the most readily available and widely accessible interface with the sacred. And yet, given its location within a body of rituals and a system of ceremonial, the icon can paradoxically become remote from the world of affect that the worshipper inhabits. N Pushpamala, Angelo da Fonseca and Veer Munshi approach the icon from distinctive ideological commitments, but all of them hold colloquy with the icon. They reclaim the icon for the world of affect and criticality, for the circulations of human tribulation and exaltation, using humour, wisdom, wit and emotional tenderness.
Exorcising Phantoms
The sacred can manifest itself through troubling, repressed fragments that refuse to be assimilated into a coherent narrative of selfhood. The phantoms of the sacred can generate anxiety, vertigo, delirium and terror. They threaten the self ’s stability and consistency; they prompt a questioning of religious and ethnic foundation myths; they decoy the self into pursuing them in various
directions. Tyeb Mehta, Tushar Joag and Gargi Raina conduct courageous inquiries into the pivotal role that the phantoms of the sacred play in India’s charged social and political climate, where communities that have lived together in peace for generations can be manipulated at shockingly short notice into annihilating one another.
Sensing Allegory
Allegory is narrative travelling in disguise, in camouflage. Its surface lends itself to reading while its depths are hidden by encryption; but often, the key to the code is left lying in plain sight. Sudhir Patward-han’s paintings evoke the life of the small town or shanty, coping with the crises of late-industrial society. Looking closely, however, we are sometimes intrigued, then amazed to find that his protagonists might engage one another in the manner of figures in a Gothic altarpiece or a painting from the Northern Renaissance, and their local gestures and costumes conceal scenes from the life of Christ. Without warning, the viewer will find that a dystopian late-in-dustrial townscape yields up a parable about hope lost, redemption deferred, and people driven into a spiritual wilderness. Jehangir Jani works with fragmentary, episodic elements of Arabic calligraphy and the symbols of Shi’a history, allusively indicating the liminal state that the secular-ized artist occupies, between what he calls ‘the architecture of belief ’ and the gram-mar of abstraction.
Afterlife
The afterlife is a vital element of the sacred. A tradition of philosophical inquiry might migrate from the circles of debate in which it arose, and find habitation on alien shores. A saint-poet’s presence may continue after her physical extinction, in the form of a circulating corpus of poems carried into the future by the voices of disciples, so that the presence becomes the voice, relayed, echo-ing, memorized, found again in translation. And in funerary art, whether the Pharaonic tombs or the Faiyum portraits, the afterlife is that fascinating awareness of the strength, beauty and energy of those who are no longer living, encountered through memori-al gestures.
Prajakta Palav’s additive social project – which is a new departure from the painterly practice for which she is known – crystallis-es around the poems of the saint-poet Bahinabai, which she shares with school children, eliciting their responses through the drawn and painted image. Kartik
Sood’s paintings act like prayers for the dead: even as their bodies return to the elements, the memory of all that inspired them is embodied through lyrical evocation.
Strange and Sublime Addresses
The body is a costume for states of trans-formation; Sahej Rahal, acting in shamanic mode, tempts an unidentified totem crea-ture or spirit animal to break the cover of civility mandated by social life. Rohini Devasher, drawing on the astronomer’s expertise, invokes what Walter Benjamin described as the aura, the simultaneity of intimacy and distance, through her mythic, abstract topographies. Gigi Scaria dedicates himself to the earth’s last uninhabited expanses, or to landscapes violated by industry, where the human being can only be a survivor, a recipient of visions of the vastness yet also the fragility of the universe. In such avatars does the ecological Sublime, the post-industrial Sublime mani-fest itself, exposing the viewer to heightened conditions of strangeness, disorientation and terror.
This exhibition proposes that the sacred is not a pre-ordained and pre-shaped entity. It is an auratic, liminal condition, a tantalizing horizon and a place where you find yourself without looking for it.
*[An extract from the curatorial essay by Nancy Adajania]
L: Detail of Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-1516): sculpted parts by Niclaus of Haguenau and paintings by Matthias Grünewald
R: Sudhir Patwardhan, Bylanes Saga, 2007
Pushpamala N (And Clare Arni), Our Lady of Velankanni, Type C-Print on Metallic Paper, 20 x 24 inches, 2000-2004
Angelo da Fonseca (1902-1967), Flight to Egypt, Watercolour on paper, 12 x 16 inches, 1959, Image courtesy Xavier Centre of Historical Research (XCHR)
(above) Tyeb Mehta , Koodal, Film, 1970, Produced byFilms Division
(below) Tushar Joag, 3 Bullets for Gandhi, Single channelvideo, 5 min 2 sec, 2007
Kartik Sood, Love Never Dies a Natural Death, 2013
SAHEJ RAHALAchkan
Cloth, polyurethane, acrylic paint3 x 2.5 x 2.5 ft, 2013
Courtesy: Chatterjee & Lal
GIGI SCARIATime Out 2
Inkjet print on archival paper 32 x 48 inches, 2013
TUSHAR JOAGPhantoms
Single channel video3 min 42 sec, 2002
JEHANGIR JANITa'veel (Postcard Series),
9 Watercolours on Arches paper15 x 11 inches, 2014
KARTIK SOODLove Never Dies a Natural Death
Portraits - Oil, acrylic, paper pulp, ink on paper, on boards; Landscapes - Archival pigment and gouache on archival paper
8.5 x 11.3 inches each, 2013
TYEB MEHTAKoodal
Film, 1970 Produced by Films Division
ROHINI DEVASHERSurveyor (04)
Colour pencil on archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle museum etching paper
Ed. Unique, 23 x 41 inches, 2013
PUSHPAMALA NOur Lady of Velankanni (After Contemporary Votive Images)
From The Photo-Performance Project, 'Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs', Bangalore
Type C-Print on Metallic paperEdition of 20, Set of 10, 20 x 24 inches
2000 - 2004
ANGELO DA FONSECAFlight to Egypt
Water colour on paper, 12 x 16 inches, 1959Courtesy: Xavier Centre of Historical Research
PRAJAKTA PALAVOnce upon a time
Mixed media on canvas, 3 x 4 feet
GARGI RAINAExcavating the Mirror Neuron (Ayeneh-Kari)
Mixed media on Arches paper, 36 x 59 inches, 2013
SUDHIR PATWARDHANBylanes - Saga (diptych)
Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches, 2007
VEER MUNSHIHamara Hanuman
Digital print on archival paper 54 x 42 inches, 2009
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VOL I, ISSUE 01, New DelhiJanuary - March 2010
Rs.
20
0
VO
L I, ISSU
E 01, N
ew D
elhi Janu
ary - March
2010
Selected poetry of Amiri Baraka/Le ri Jones - 1979
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092
102
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Cover.indd 1 2/5/10 7:57:06 PM
SAHEJ RAHALAchkan
Cloth, polyurethane, acrylic paint3 x 2.5 x 2.5 ft, 2013
Courtesy: Chatterjee & Lal
GIGI SCARIATime Out 2
Inkjet print on archival paper 32 x 48 inches, 2013
TUSHAR JOAGPhantoms
Single channel video3 min 42 sec, 2002
JEHANGIR JANITa'veel (Postcard Series),
9 Watercolours on Arches paper15 x 11 inches, 2014
KARTIK SOODLove Never Dies a Natural Death
Portraits - Oil, acrylic, paper pulp, ink on paper, on boards; Landscapes - Archival pigment and gouache on archival paper
8.5 x 11.3 inches each, 2013
TYEB MEHTAKoodal
Film, 1970 Produced by Films Division
ROHINI DEVASHERSurveyor (04)
Colour pencil on archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle museum etching paper
Ed. Unique, 23 x 41 inches, 2013
PUSHPAMALA NOur Lady of Velankanni (After Contemporary Votive Images)
From The Photo-Performance Project, 'Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs', Bangalore
Type C-Print on Metallic paperEdition of 20, Set of 10, 20 x 24 inches
2000 - 2004
ANGELO DA FONSECAFlight to Egypt
Water colour on paper, 12 x 16 inches, 1959Courtesy: Xavier Centre of Historical Research
PRAJAKTA PALAVOnce upon a time
Mixed media on canvas, 3 x 4 feet
GARGI RAINAExcavating the Mirror Neuron (Ayeneh-Kari)
Mixed media on Arches paper, 36 x 59 inches, 2013
SUDHIR PATWARDHANBylanes - Saga (diptych)
Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches, 2007
VEER MUNSHIHamara Hanuman
Digital print on archival paper 54 x 42 inches, 2009
Dan
iel K
unitz
- T
he B
lack
Hum
or o
f O
Zha
ng’s
Littl
e Red
Boo
k
TJ
Dem
os -
Mon
sters
of th
e Fut
ure:
On
The
Oto
lith
Gro
up’s
Prep
arat
ions
1-5
Ran
jit H
osko
te -
Noc
turn
es o
n D
ayan
ita S
ingh
: Blu
e Boo
k [#
18-2
3]
Luc
ian
Har
ris -
Nig
ht S
kin:
Chi
ttrov
anu
Maz
umda
r
Tej
al S
hah
- “I
Am”
Bai
ju P
arth
an -
Low
brow
Art-
Intim
atio
ns o
f a
Pan
Glo
bal U
nder
grou
nd
The
Pha
ntom
Lad
y St
rike
s Aga
in -
Hero
es
Raq
s Med
ia C
olle
ctiv
e - S
hore
Leav
e
VOL I, ISSUE 01, New DelhiJanuary - March 2010
Rs.
20
0
VO
L I, ISSU
E 01, N
ew D
elhi Janu
ary - March
2010
Selected poetry of Amiri Baraka/Le ri Jones - 1979
