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Dayanita Singh – The Adventures of a Photographer

November 30, 2012

Medha Kapur of Saffronart shares a note on Dayanita Singh, one of India’s most influential photographers

Mumbai: An artist best known for her photographs, Dayanita Singh lives and works in New Delhi and now also is partly based in Goa. Born in 1961, Singh attended the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and the International Center of Photography in New York. Most of her works are in black-and-white, though of late she has also delved deeper into colour photography. Singh is best known for her portraits and interior views of Indian domestic life, especially urban middle and upper class families. Her works have been exhibited extensively, including galleries in Rome, New York, Berlin, London, Milan, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Boston.

Singh has a deep understanding, creating unimaginable images and continuously reinventing her photographs, in the way that language reinvents words. Her works include a photographic series documenting the tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, and Ladies of Saligao, a series in which she photographed women from the village in Goa where she lived. Another significant series is Singh’s documentation of her close friend, Mona Ahmed. Singh photographically mapped Mona’s intimate life, her adopted daughter, her banishment from the community of eunuchs she belonged to as a result of her alcoholism, and her eventual illegal activities in a cemetery, for a period of 13 years.  Singh has documented several other subjects as well, tracking their complex and difficult lives, and developing symbiotic relationship with them, as well as with the medium of photography.

Zakir Hussain (1986)

Zakir Hussain (1986)
Image courtesy http://www.dayanitasingh.com

MYSELF, MONA AHMED (2001)

MYSELF, MONA AHMED (2001)
Image Courtesy http://www.dayanitasingh.com

Singh has published nine books of her photographs: Zakir Hussain (1986), Myself, Mona Ahmed (2001), Privacy (2003), Chairs (2005), Go Away Closer(2007), Sent a Letter (2008), Blue Book (2008), Dream Villa (2010), Dayanita Singh (2010), and House of Love (2011) . The Adventures of a Photographer, an exhibition of her work currently on view at the Bildmuseet in Sweden (till 13 January, 2013) comprises works from the last twelve years of her career: dreamlike landscapes, cityscapes and industrial nightscapes saturated with intense colour, along with carefully executed black and white images of people and interiors such as her renowned portraits of Indian upper-middle-class families and her latest project File Room.

The exhibition Dayanita Singh / The Adventures of a Photographer is curated by Katarina Pierre, Director Bildmuseet, assisted by Polly Yassin.

Frieze London 2012

October 17, 2012

Elisabetta Marabotto of Saffronart on one of the most avant-garde fairs in the world

London: The time of the year when all contemporary art lovers descend on London for one of the greatest international art fairs has just passed. Regent’s Park in the heart of the city just hosted the Frieze Art Fair & Frieze Masters 2012 for four days (11-14 October).

With its overwhelming size and number of participants, Frieze allows you to view some of the best art from all over the world and immerse yourself in a sea of colours, shapes and unspoken words.

The presence of South Asian art at the fair seemed to be more evident in this edition compared to previous years. Two Indian galleries, Chatterjee & Lal and Project 88, which was in the Frame section of the fair last year, confirmed their presence and many of well-known international galleries included works by Indian artists in their exhibits.

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar, Memory Drawing IV, 2010

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar, Memory Drawing IV, 2010
Image Credit: http://friezelondon.com/exhibitors/exhibit/4973/1083

Chatterjee & Lal focused its attention on performance art, with Nikhil Chopra and Hetain Patel, two artists who approach this form of expression in different ways. While Chopra mainly uses costumes, drawings and photography, Patel works with self-decoration, video and photography. The latter explores issues of identity using characters to which he contrasts and compares himself. Nikhil Chopra, on the other hand, expresses himself through live performances whose characters are quite auto-referential and discuss the issues of the modern world. Time is an essential element of his performances. The artist is fascinated by how things transform over time and how the repetition of events is almost ritualistic. However, once the performance is over we are left with pictures and drawings which document the act and have the task of bringing the emotions provoked by the performance back to life.

Hetain Patel, Mehndi 9, 2012

Hetain Patel, Mehndi 9, 2012
Image Credit: http://friezelondon.com/exhibitors/exhibit/4973/1058

Project 88 had on display a selection of works by Sarnath Banerjee from his project on the London Olympic Games, “Gallery of Losers”which ironically tackles the theme of winning/losing. For the first time in the history of the Olympics the attention is focused on the losers and the people who almost made it.

Sarnath Banerjee, High Jump (set of 16), 2012

Sarnath Banerjee, High Jump (set of 16), 2012
Image Credit: http://friezelondon.com/exhibitors/exhibit/4953/1381

In “Poise II” Neha Choksi engages with themes of detachment and disappearance using installation art. The piece comprises a mattress held up by vases containing faded flowers.

Neha Choksi, Poise II, 2010

Neha Choksi, Poise II, 2010
Image Credit: http://friezelondon.com/exhibitors/exhibit/4953/1377

The feelings of sadness provoked by this work are soon lightened by an installation by Raqs Media Collective called “Whenever the heart skips a beat”.

Raqs Media Collective, Whenever the Heart Skips a beat, 2011

Raqs Media Collective, Whenever the Heart Skips a beat, 2011
Image Credit: http://friezelondon.com/exhibitors/exhibit/4953/1379

The unusual clock moving forwards and backwards, skipping beats regularly, creates witty combinations of words. Also on display is Raqs Media Collective’s “The Philosophy of Namak Haram Revised”, a picture reflecting on all the things we should do but we cannot. One of these is the debt we have towards books which give us knowledge without being repaid. Thus, we all are ‘Namak Haraam’, innate debtors for the knowledge we constantly steal from books in our daily life. The other artists on display at Project 88 were Huma Mulji and the Otolith Group.

Raqs Media Collective, The Philosophy of Namak Haram Revised, 2012

Raqs Media Collective, The Philosophy of Namak Haram Revised, 2012
Image Credit: http://friezelondon.com/exhibitors/exhibit/4953/1378

Other Indian art works on display at Frieze were by Dayanita Singh at Frith Street Gallery, Shilpa Gupta at Yvon Lambert, Bharti Kher at Galerie Perrotin, and Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery. Corvi-Mora Gallery exhibited works by the Pakistani artists Imran Qureshi and Aisha Khalid.

Imran Qureshi, This leprous brightness, 2011

Imran Qureshi, This leprous brightness, 2011
Image Credit: Picture by the author.

This year, for the first time, Frieze opened the door to galleries displaying work by old masters as well, perhaps to attract visitors and illuminate some of the forms, techniques and concepts behind contemporary art. This newly opened section had on display different kinds of art up to the year 2000, leaving the exclusivity of the last 12 years to the main area of the fair. Frieze Masters enjoyed great success, rivalling TEFAF Maastricht, perhaps because of the merging of old masters, antiquities and some modern artists. In this section Indian art was on display at the booths of Sam Fogg and Francesca Galloway.

After this deep immersion in the art world, we will need a few days to process all of the images and the concepts behind the works. Frieze is definitely a unique yet overwhelming experience. Nevertheless, as always, I’m already looking forward to seeing what will be on display next year to please our eyes and stimulate our minds.

“Evidence” by Amar Kanwar on view at Fotomuseum Winterthur

September 17, 2012

Medha Kapur of Saffronart reflects on Amar Kanwar’s video works on view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland

Zurich: Amar Kanwar born in New Delhi in 1964 is an independent Indian documentary filmmaker whose lyrical and meditative work explores the political, social, economic and ecological conditions of the Indian subcontinent. Having directed and produced over 40 films, which are a mixture of documentary, poetic travelogue and visual essay, much of Kanwar’s work traces the legacy of decolonisation and the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Recurrent themes are the splitting of families, the abuse and rape of women, and the struggle for democracy, as well as the opposition between globalization and tribal consciousness in rural India.

Amar Kanwar, A Season Outside, 1997. From Trilogy, 1997-2003

Amar Kanwar, A Season Outside, 1997. From Trilogy, 1997-2003

His breakthrough came with Earth as Witness, which he made in 1994 for the Tibetan government in exile. For the first time, he had more control over the film and was able to try out new narrative techniques. This was followed by the films for which he is best known, such as his trilogy, A Season Outside (1997), A Night of Prophecy (2002) and To Remember (2003), as well as King of Dreams (2001), Hennigsvaer (2006), the nineteen-part video installation The Torn First Pages (2004-2008), the eight-part installation The Lightning Testimonies (2007), A Love Story (2010), and the new film he is presenting this summer at the Documenta 13, The Sovereign Forest ( 2012).

Amar Kanwar, A Season Outside, 1997. From Trilogy, 1997-2003.

Amar Kanwar, A Season Outside, 1997. From Trilogy, 1997-2003.

In 2012 Amar Kanwar participated in Documenta for the third consecutive year. The exhibition at Fotomuseum Winterthur presents his major video works, installed through seven rooms: Trilogy, 1997-2003 (A Season Outside, A Night of Prophecy und To Remember); The Torn First Pages, 2004-2008; Henningsvaer, 2006; The Lightning Testimonies, 2007; A Love Story, 2010. The exhibition is curated by Urs Stahel.

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Raqs Media Collective: The Great Bare Mat and Constellation

September 14, 2012

Sneha Sikand of Saffronart on Raqs Media Collective’s latest commissioned works at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

The Great Bare Mat & Constellation (projection still), 2012
Raqs Media Collective
Image credit: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Boston: Raqs Media Collective (a artist trio comprising New Delhi based Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta) was commissioned to create two installations for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston after completing a residency there. Opening on 20 September this year, the installations are in keeping with the Raqs tradition of using image, sound and software to investigate a series of questions through group exchange.

Comprising photographs and film stills which the artists took during their residency in 2010, they have now created two installations within the museum. The first installation, The Great Bare Mat Exchange refers to a carpet, on whose surface a series of conversations are to be staged. The carpet is displayed in front of The Vinegar Tasters, a 17th century Japanese screen from the museum’s collection. The carpet represents the platform on which a series of philosophical discussions are to follow. Ranging from topics like nostalgia and intelligence to music and accumulation, these subjects have been chosen by Raqs Media Collective themselves.

The Great Bare Mat & Constellation (projection still), 2012
Raqs Media Collective
Image credit: Isabella Steward Gardner Museum

The second installation is a reflection of the artists’ flashlight tour of the museum in 2010. They were struck by how figures and objects seemed to appear like floating apparitions in the darkness. The artists have incorporated their experiences to create a silent, digital-looped series which is projected onto a wall with a shiny metallic surface. The projection along with the surface presents a dual narrative which plays on the viewer’s imagination.

Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner Museum, feels that Raqs is rooted in bringing together lost spaces in time. “They pay attention to every passing second as if it were an infinity, and the heightened attention they bring to bear on what the collection contains invites us to reconsider how we look at art itself.”

The works will be on view at the museum till January 7, 2013.

Read more about the exhibition

Hereinafter, by Anup Mathew Thomas

September 4, 2012

Medha Kapur of Saffronart shares a note on a Thomas’ latest solo exhibition at Gallery Ske, Bengaluru.

Bengaluru:  Anup Mathew Thomas is a visual artist who lives and works in Bangalore. His photographic images depict events that are both personal and specific but also ask broader cultural questions. Thomas’ works are often presented as digital slideshows as well as prints.

This exhibition’s title, Hereinafter, alludes to both the words ‘afterlife’ and ‘hereafter’. It captures troubling themes such as death, objects reminiscent of yesteryears, and the need to preserve bygone times and experiences. Consisting of 15 images, much of the work on display focuses on the cultural history of Kerala. Thomas uses traditional storytelling conventions to present his documentation of objects collected and preserved by others

Thomas also brings in a handful of compelling images of crime scenes at a police museum, and the staging of a man’s funeral, to capture not only the human aspect of loss and death, but also its significance in social culture, expanding beyond the scope of human (and animal) mortality, and touching on the preservation of legacies.

‘Ithikkara Bridge’, the first piece you see stepping into the gallery, sets the tone for the show with a plaque bearing this message:

Ithikkara Bridge

The plaque itself is a memorial stone, but works on different levels to emphasise a transition or ‘passage’ from life to death. The fact that the bridge was opened for traffic the day after Divakaran’s funeral procession elaborates the idea of passage.

‘KS Biologicals’, a photograph of the personal collection of K. Shikamoni, a biology teacher, represents both a straightforward attempt at showcasing the remains of a variety of species, much like in a school’s biology lab, as well as the personal idea of collecting.

KS Biologicals

View more works from this exhibition