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Indian Art at SH Contemporary 2012

September 15, 2012

Manjari Sihare speaks with Diana Campbell about the India Focus projects at SH Contemporary, the premier Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai, China

SH Contemporary is one of the most successful art fairs in China, as it captures the dynamism of the Chinese art market as well as the spirit of Shanghai, a truly creative city that bridges business, culture and innovation. The 6th edition of the fair took place in the spectacular Shanghai Exhibition Center, one of the city’s landmarks, from 7–9 September 2012. SH Contemporary was organized into two main sections: The Art Show with over 100 selected exhibitors, and SH Contemporary Projects. The latter included an exhibition oncontemporary ink and calligraphy-related multimedia works titled Now Ink, and Hot Spots consisting of large scale and site specific projects by various artists. The Indian component of Hot Spots was presented by the Creative India Foundation and curated by Diana Campbell, the founding director and chief curator of the foundation. Campbell shared details of this project with me:

Q: Give us an overview of SH Contemporary’s India Focus?

A: For this rendition of SH Contemporary, the director Massimo Torrigiani wanted to complement the fair by supporting large scale curatorial projects. There are curated exhibitions, such as Now Ink (artists reflecting on the traditional Chinese medium of Ink and calligraphy), Hot Spots (monumental new commissions), and First Issue (curated solo projects by young artists). I was invited to add to the fair’s curatorial programming by contributing my knowledge of Indian art to the fair’s programming. What is great is this is not an ‘India’ show per se, the artists are integrated into the overall exhibition for the quality of the work. The artists included in the India Focus projects do not have galleries with booths at the fair, which shows the commitment of the organizers to showing good works and creating quality exhibitions, not just highlighting the works of their exhibitors’ artists.

Q: How did this project take fruition? Please highlight Creative India Foundation’s role in Focus and the SH Contemporary Fair in general?

A: I met Davide Quadrio, the director of ArtHub Asia, who was in charge of the special projects, because we were both speaking at a public art conference in London. He was interested in the work I have been doing, and he and Massimo Torrigiani invited me to come to China to do a site visit. I was taken with the space and the potential to present Indian creativity to such a wide audience. I also studied Chinese in school, so personally I was interested in revisiting the art of this region. The Creative India Foundation supported new commissions and my curatorial work for the fair. The Foundation is presenting the work of Indian artists, and this way the work that is displayed is not tied to a particular gallery or region. 

Q: Could you talk a little about the significance of India being the inaugural country for SH Contemporary: Focus? With the Indian Highway exhibition at the Ullens Center in Beijing and now the SH Contemporary: Focus, could we say that finally this is the start of a cultural exchange between the two countries which have so far had their buzzing contemporary art scenes restricted to their own fortresses?

A. I certainly hope so! There are many challenges navigating between the ‘fortresses’, but I hope that the growing interest in India will create new opportunities for Indian and Chinese cross-cultural exchange. There is already another exhibition with Indian artists right around the corner. I am co-curating the Mumbai City Pavilion for the Shanghai Biennale (which is exploring city rather than national pavilions) and there will be 9 artists in that exhibition – it opens in a month.

Q: China is known for its censorship rules as we saw in the recent episode at the Ullens Center (removal of Tejal Shah’s work at the behest of the Indian government). Did you encounter problems of this kind with your curation? Were the proposals and final projects vetted by the Chinese authorities before, during and after the works were installed?

A: Everything must be vetted by the censorship board months in advance. None of my works were particularly controversial, so I was fine. However, there were some works that were pulled by the censorship bureau at the opening – and since one was in the catalogue – the catalogue is now banned. Sometimes censorship can create more interest (like Ai Wei Wei). Tejal Shah’s piece ironically was an Indian Embassy instigated censorship situation, they pressured Beijing to pull the video, otherwise it would have been fine. 

Gyan Panchal, pelom 2, 2012
Now Ink
Courtesy: Jhaveri contemporary, Mumbai

Q: You have also co-curated the theme-based exhibition, Now Ink. Please elaborate on the works of artists featured herein: Gyan Panchal, Manish Nai and Rohini Devasher?

 A: Gyan Panchal, Rohini Devasher, and Manish Nai join a group of East Asian artists who explore the very traditional use of ink in new ways. In Gyan Panchal’s work Pelom 2, he transforms a found piece of marble which had been artificially painted green. He subtly removes the green ink trying to get back to the stone’s original color, and the result is quite beautiful. 

Rohini Devasher’s beguiling video Arboreal uses video feedback to produce beautiful tree like forms which resemble ink drawings, but actually do not use ink at all. Manish Nai uses watercolor to transform photographs of cracked walls by adding further dimension to them. This exhibition has been incredibly well received and has been invited to show in Venice during the Biennale as a satellite exhibition. 

Rohini Devasher, Arboreal, 2011
Now Ink
Courtesy: The artist and Project 88, Mumbai

Q: Please tell us about the new projects by Shilpa Gupta, Aaditi Joshi and Raqs Media Collective commissioned by the Creative India Foundation? 

A: Shilpa Gupta was an ArtHub Asia collaboration, and their team searched the country to find a calligrapher who could write the Chinese Arabic script called Xiao er Jing. The piece says “I Live Under Your Sky Too” in English, Chinese, and Xiao er Jing, and with ArtHub’s support will travel to a public place in Shanghai soon. Shilpa is also in the biennale – so she is having quite a China moment. She also designed the costumes for the Paris Opera having to do with China earlier this year. 

Aaditi Joshi, Untitled, 2012 (front and side views)
Commissioned by the Creative India Foundation

Aaditi Joshi, Untitled, 2012
Commissioned by the Creative India Foundation

Aaditi Joshi created and completed works in China. It was her first time out of India, and she had a production based residency and collaborated with Chinese workers. She created a beautiful mountain like sculpture which graces the west wing entrance, and the plastic form is reminiscent of Chinese scholar rocks. Her work has been invited to show in a UNESCO Heritage building called Bund18, so the project will take a longer life. 

Raqs Media Collective, Whenever the heart skips a beat, 2012
Commissioned by the Creative India Foundation
Courtesy: The artists, Project 88, Mumbai and Creative India Foundation
Image courtesy: Diana Campbell

Raqs’ work, Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat, is a work I have a long involvement with since I commissioned the original video for the India Art Fair projects I curated last year. They created stills of the clock work and translated them into Chinese – and these projections were displayed in monumental size in the main hall.

Q: This is actually the second time that SH Contemporary has prioritized India, the first being in 2008 to showcase the Best Discoveries project by Delhi based curator, Deeksha Nath. Would you have any insights from the Fair organizers about the perception and reception towards Indian art in 2008 and now?

A: The fair has had many changes in leadership (which is one of its criticisms) so no one has been discussing the past projects.

Q: SH Contemporary is considered to be the most important art fair in China having preceded ART HK in its inception. How are the two different, if at all? Do the tax free import and English language environment give ART HK an edge over SH Contemporary?

A: I would think the user friendly logistics of Hong Kong would make it a much more internationally friendly for exhibitors. However, for the Chinese market, SH Contemporary brings the best of Asian art domestically and serves this market beautifully, and there are real tax benefits to buying overseas. I was at dinner with directors of Art HK and Art Stage Singapore last night, and I think all three can co-exist and thrive together as they don’t necessarily have the same client base. SH Contemporary’s curatorial projects were a strong addition to navigating the chaos of an art fair. I was intrigued by Pablo Rudolf’s (Lorenzo Rudolf’s son) plans for Art Stage Singapore with an Indonesia Pavilion with completely new commissions. I sponsored a project for Art HK in the past and I think the way the booths were organized wasn’t that friendly to the smaller Asian gallery exhibitors – I think this is going to change now that the leadership is Art Basel, though. I think the India Art Fair is definitely at risk when it comes to Art HK, at least with having international exhibitors.

Q: What has the response been like? China is known to represent the new breed of international art collectors. Have these collectors expressed any interest in Indian art?

A: The response has been great, and there’s been good interest in Indian art, especially Manish Nai. There are many new museums opening in China and they are beginning to have a more pan Asian focus. 

Manish Nai, Untitled works, 2012
Now Ink
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke

Read more about SH Contemporary 2012

Diana Campbell is Founding Director and Chief Curator, Creative India Foundation, Hyderabad, a private foundation which advances Indian contemporary art globally and is developing India’s first international sculpture park. She is a guest contributor on our blog. To read her previous posts, please click here and stay tuned for more. 

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

Reviewing Devi Art Foundation’s Sarai Reader 9: The Exhibition

September 6, 2012

Kanika Anand visits Devi Art Foundation’s recent project Sarai Reader 9: The Exhibition, curated by & in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective

New Delhi: Raqs Media Collective has consistently been curating and creating intellectually stimulating work, even if occasionally too dense for common comprehension. And since its inception, the Devi Art Foundation has hosted meaningful exhibitions that are ambitious yet well presented. So collaboration between the two makes for a potentially successful exhibition with alternative views in both thought and creation.

A look into a work in progress at the Devi Art Foundation exhibition

The basis and impetus behind Sarai Reader 9 is its nature to draw on ‘exhibition’ as an evolving process, introducing new forms of exploring creative thought and method. Invitations are open to anyone with an interesting idea and an engaging means of presentation, limited to a fixed duration and applied in a space.

The path leading to the projection screens showing Ishita Tiwari’s ‘Amateur Film Archive’ including films like Arranged Marriage, Machli, Sab Maal China etc. with contributions from Amitabh Kumar, Aman Sethi, Jacques Ranciere, Vivek Narayanan

The curatorial format follows three episodes, each showcasing a series of the 100 projects in its nine month life. The selection of the first 40 was announced at the opening on 18 August accompanied with architectural interventions by Sayantan Maitra Boka and Zuleikha Chaudhari; experimental sounds and electro-acoustic music by Ish Shehrawat, Andi Teichmann, Brian Citro and Ignat Karmalito; amateur cinema presented by Ishita Tiwary; and the release of a book by Cybermohalla Hub. The exhibition space in its current avatar reminds one of scaffolding upon which participants will furnish their subjective particulars of expression. The space somehow maintains an air of mystery and sanctity until each proposal’s gradual and final realization, scheduled as per a time-line.

The ideation of the project is certainly refreshing, and its eventual manifestation is something that I’m not the only one looking forward to. It has proved to be a platform for young and emergent energies to partner and experiment in a space widely visited yet one that maintains the demureness of the artist’s studio.

Visualizing the Invisible- Reading & Writing Nietzsche by Belinder Dhanoa

The architectural prototype of the Cybermohalla Hub, by Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Muller

I wish to see many more of the same endeavors!

More information on the project.

Kanika Anand is an art professional and budding curator specializing in Indian contemporary art. She holds a degree in Art History from the National Museum Institute, New Delhi, and has worked in the field for five years with leading galleries of the like of Gagosian Gallery, Gallery Espace and Talwar Gallery in New York and New Delhi. She is currently pursuing the Curatorial Training Program at the Ecole du Magasin in Grenoble, France, in line with her interest to responsibly curate projects towards making art more accessible as well as inter-disciplinary.

Raqs Media Collective: The Primary Education of the Autodidact

June 20, 2012

Medha Kapur of Saffronart on RAQS Media Collective’s window installation at Audain Gallery, Vancouver (June 1 – September 4, 2012)

Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata SenguptaVANCOUVER, BC: Raqs Media Collective, a collaborative project crossing and combing different media, comprising Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, has deeply impacted contemporary culture in India and around the world. They have been commissioned by Audain Gallery, Vancouver, to present a site-specific photographic work in the large windows outside of the gallery on Hastings Street. Titled The Primary Education of the Autodidact, the work explores knowledge, power, utterance, and silence. The work directly addresses the notion and problematic of the autodidact, and also attests to the autodidacticism of the collective’s own diverse body of work and working methods. This is part of Canada’s Indian Summer Festival.

Raqs Media Collective, The Primary Education of the Autodidact

Raqs Media Collective has consistently pushed boundaries and broadened awareness about the contradictions between knowing and knowledge, between production and creativity, and between exploitation and use. The collective works as artists, filmmakers, writers, curators, editors and event organizers, restlessly exploring new forms and methods of production while preserving a consistent rigor.

Click here for more information.