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Posts tagged with Nalini Malani

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale begins today!

December 12, 2012

Manjari Sihare shares details of the much awaited Kochi- Muziris Biennale

Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012 An interactive map of India's First Biennale celebrating contemporary artists from around the world.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012 An interactive map of India’s First Biennale celebrating contemporary artists from around the world.

New York: The date 12.12.12 is going to go down in India’s books for more than one reason.  The country’s largest contemporary art event, and its first biennale, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is being inaugurated today across different venues in the Fort Kochi area of Cochin in Kerala, South India. While India has a strong history of hosting triennales, the very first of which was organized in 1968 by the legendary Mulk Raj Anand, the Kochi- Muziris Biennale will be the first biennale in the country.

Typical of the phenomenon of an international art biennale, this one is also centered on the city, in this case, invoking the underlying multi-ethnic spirit of the modern metropolis of Kochi and its mythical past, Muziris, the recently excavated ancient city that was buried under layers of mud and mythology after a massive flood in the 14th century. The biennale is the brain child of eminent contemporary Indian artists, Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu. The first edition will feature approximately 90 Indian and international artists, introducing contemporary international visual art practice to India in manner not done before. Special highlights include newly commissioned works by artists such as Ariel Hassan (Argentina), Amanullah Mojadidi (Afghanistan), Anita Dube (India), Sudarshan Shetty (India), Subodh Gupta (India), Hossein Valamanesh (Iran/Australia), Tallur LN (India), Vivan Sundaram (India), Sheela Gowda (India), Joseph Semah (Netherlands), Nalini Malani (India), Atul Dodiya (India), UBIK (Dubai), Rigo 23 (Portugal), Jonas Staal (Netherlands), Dylan Martorell (Scotland/Australia), Ernesto Neto (Brazil). British singing sensation of Tamil descent, Mathangi Arulpragasam (M.I.A.) has been roped in to perform at the inauguration. Known for her avant-garde music, M.I.A. has previously shared stage space with the likes of Madonna and Rihanna, as well as  been a part of the A.R. Rahman’s team for the music of Slumdog Millionaire.

The event is a multi-faceted one including a two-day symposium, ‘Site Imaginaries’, on 15 & 16 December, 2012.  From the situated ground point of Kochi, the symposium aims to explore and retrieve memories in the current global context to posit alternatives to political and cultural discourses, and build a platform for dialogue for a new aesthetics and politics rooted in the Indian experience. The panelists include Aman Mojadidi, Amar Kanwar, Ariel Hassan, Ashok Sukumaran , Atul Dodiya, Clifford Charles, Shahidul Alam, Gayatri Sinha, Geeta Kapur, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Jonas Staal, Joseph Semah, Marieke van Hal, Nalini Malani, Nancy Adajania, Paul Domela, Pooja Sood, Ranjit Hoskote, Riyas Komu, Robert Montgomery, Sarat Maharaj, Tasneem Mehta, Vivan Sundaram, Vivek Vilasini.

The biennale will be held across different venues including the Aspinwall House loaned to Kochi-Muziris Biennale by DLF Limited in association with the Gujral Foundation, a restored Dutch bungalow called David Hall, spice warehouses and heritage structures being opened to the public for the first time ever. Characteristic of leading biennales across the world, this one too is expected to give a boost to the State’s economy.

Read more.

South Asian Contemporary Art at New Zealand’s Govett-Brewster Gallery

July 25, 2012

Manjari Sihare shares details of a new exhibition of South Asian art at New Zealand’s leading contemporary art museum

New Zealand: The contemporary art museum of New Plymouth in Taranaki, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, is currently hosting the region’s most extensive exhibition of South Asian contemporary art. Sub-Topical Heat: New Art from South Asia features the works of nine artists from the subcontinent, namely Naeem Mohaiemen, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Bani Abidi, Sheba Chhachhi, Raking Leaves, Gigi Scaria, Imran Qureshi, and Sharmila Samant.

Read more about this exhibition.

Govett-Brewster is recognized internationally in the world of contemporary art. In 2009, the Arts Foundation of New Zealand bestowed the Gallery with their prestigious Governors’ Award to acknowledge the institution’s singular commitment to the cause of contemporary art over four decades. Incidentally, this exhibition is not the gallery’s first showcase of art from the Indian subcontinent. In 2009, the Gallery hosted Nalani Malani’s compelling installation, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain.

Nalini Malani, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, 2005 (installation view)
Image courtesy: http://www.govettbrewster.com/Events/EventDetail/e/130/title/nalini-malani.aspx

These exhibitions have been curated by the current Director of the Gallery, Rhana Davenport, a cultural specialist with substantial experience in the field of contemporary art in Asia, the Pacific and Australasia. Davenport is known for her significant experience with international cultural festivals and contemporary art biennial/triennial projects including the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery, and the Sydney Festival.

The current exhibition opened earlier this month, and will be on view until 4 November, 2012. Sheba Chhachhi, Gigi Scaria, N.S. Harsha and Sharmila Samant traveled to New Plymouth for the opening of the exhibit. The gallery organized a series of short dialogues between each of these artists and Davenport, which are available for free viewing on Youtube (see links below).

Interview with NS Harsha

Interview with Gigi Scaria

Interview with Sheba Chhachhi

Interview with Sharmila Samant 

In search of Vanished Blood: Nalini Malani @ dOCUMENTA (13)

July 4, 2012

Manjari Sihare on Nalini Malani’s work featured as part of dOCUMENTA (13) 

Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012 (installation view)
Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DOCUMENTA(13)_Malani-Nalini-In-Search-of-Vanished-Blood-by-OlafKosinsky_01.JPG

New York: The 13th edition of dOCUMENTA opened last month, and will be on view for its characteristic 100 days until September 16, 2012. Documenta is considered by many to be the mother of all international exhibitions, including the popular biennales and the triennials. It is a display of premium contemporary art that draws thousands of art lovers to the small German city of Kassel, some 120 miles north east of Frankfurt, every five years. Earlier in June, we shared details of a talk hosted by the Courtauld Institute of Art  about the contemporary South Asian artists being featured in the exhibition this year. Documenta’s list of participating artists is usually a huge hush-hush affair with the names not being released until the day of the exhibition opening. However this time around, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung managed to get their hands on this guarded list and published it in mid May. 

A significant feature in this year’s exhibition is Nalini Malani’s In Search of Vanished Blood.  Documenta customarily gives its artists at least two years to conceive and produce their projects, and the works are often cerebral, complex and large scale. This work is a colossal site-specific installation of the artist’s signature projections of light through revolving acrylic cylinders bearing painted imagery. As the cylinders spin, the images move on the walls, crossing one another in what Malani refers to as a shadow play. Issues of gender, feminism, and displacement are pervasive themes for the artist. Representations of early female archetypes, from Hindu figures like Radha, Draupadi and Sita, to such Western icons as Medea and Alice are recurrent references in her work. This latest work is inspired by Christa Wolf’s German novel, Cassandra, and Draupadi by Indian social activist and writer, Mahasweta Devi. It is a thought provoking commentary on gender, communal violence and religious fundamentalism. Watch the video for a glimpse of the work.

Malani is one of three international artists to be invited by Documenta to create an  artist’s book.  Titled after the work, In Search of Vanished Blood, this book includes texts by the Documenta 13 artistic director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, New York based contemporary social-cultural anthropologist of Indian origin, Arjun Appadurai, and stills from a film on the making of this work by Payal Kapadia. A haunting trailer of the film is available for viewing on Malani’s  website.  Documenta as an exhibit is known to engage not just visual and performing artists but also philosophers, quantum physicists and social anthropologists. Malani has also joined Appadurai to create a collaborative work for Documenta (13)’s publication series, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts.  Read more about this project.

Malani is currently exhibiting in 3 more expositions around the world including the Singapore Art Museum where her video play HAMLETMACHINE is on view in a group exhibition, Panorama: Recent Art from Contemporary Asia featuring 24 artists from 8 Asian countries. Read more. Other participations include ALICE in the Wonderland of Art at the Kunsthalle Hamburg (20 June – 30 September 2012) and INDIA – LADO A LADO [India – Side by Side], a traveling exhibition conceived for the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil (22 May to 29 July, 2012). 
Read more.

Indian artists at dOCUMENTA (13)

June 5, 2012

Manjari Sihare shares details of talk about Indian artists at this year’s dOCUMENTA

New York: For those in Kassel for the dOCUMENTA, the Courtauld Institute of Art is hosting a talk this Friday, June 8 about the contemporary Indian artists being featured in this exposition this year. Catch Nalini Malani talk about her work, and video-art theorist, Johan Pijnappel and art historian, Zehra Jumabhoy speak about other artists from the subcontinent who are being featured in this most important international exhibition of contemporary art that takes place once every five years.

Learn more about the artists in dOCUMENTA (13).