State of the Art

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Posts tagged with South Asian Art

Atul Dodiya at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

February 25, 2013

Josheen Oberoi shares a note on the artist talk given by the renowned artist Atul Dodiya

New York: The Philadelphia Museum of Art recently inaugurated a new series of artist talks with a presentation by the very established and respected contemporary Indian artist Atul Dodiya.  Held on February 13, the talk titled Somersault in Muddy Waters – A Creative Journey took the audience on a trip with the artist, along the many roads his work has traversed. This was an interesting journey to undertake with this artist in particular because of the diversity of his chosen mediums and the complexity of his oeuvre’s visual language. As Darielle Mason (The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) said in introducing Dodiya, “…his works and he so clearly bridge times, cultures and concepts…”.

Atul Dodiya
Sabari with her Birds, 2005
Lithograph and Chiri Bark paper collage on paper
50 x 40 inches
Purchased with the Stella Kramrisch Fund, 2007
Image credit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

The artist began by speaking of the diverse western and Indian artistic traditions that have consciously been a part of his art. Starting with his first solo show from 1989, his talk went through the stages of his artistic processes and mediums. Self-identifying as essentially a painter, he spoke of the varied mediums he has worked in including his world famous shutters, cabinets, and watercolors. A significant component of his talk focused on the importance of Mahatma Gandhi in his life and his pervasive presence in his work, which had culminated in the artist’s 1999 series on the Mahatma titled An Artist of Non-Violence. We were also fortunately able to see a series of delicate watercolors by the artist that have not been shown in public – these are ornithological studies of birds that he said were done for leisure, for relaxation.

The Museum plans to post the talk online and I will update this post with a link when that is available. In the meantime, if you are in Philadelphia, please visit the museum. The work above, Sabari with her Birds, is part of the museum’s collection and is on exhibit for the next six months.

Must-Attends: Beyond the India Art Fair

January 31, 2013

Manjari Sihare shares details of some must-attend exhibitions and symposia in New Delhi coinciding with the India Art Fair 

New Delhi: If you are in India right now, Delhi is the place to be. The art world is gearing up for the country’s biggest annual art extravaganza, the India Art Fair starting on Friday, February 1 (with a preview the day before). Each year since its inception in 2008, the fair has grown larger. The 5th edition is bringing together 105 exhibiting galleries from 24 countries, presenting over 1000 works by some of the most exciting artists from across the world. But the action is not just limited to just the Fair. Outside of the Fair, there are some collateral exhibitions and events that I believe are MUST ATTENDS. Here is my list:

KNMA Noida EInviteA private museum for modern and contemporary Indian art, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is known to line up an ambitious program each year to mark its birthday (three years ago in January 2010, KNMA opened its first location in the HCL campus in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi). The museum lives up to its reputation once again this year by unveiling an ambitious series of events. The first in line to open on January 18th was Zones of Contact an exhibition curated by three young and dynamic curators, Deeksha Nath, Vidya Shivadas and Akansha Rastogi. The curatorial note for the show notes that it is an attempt “to envision the museum as a site and an idea in flux, as a catalyst that by undergoing redefinition allows for concretized notions and experiences of modernity and post-modernity to be revisited and rethought.” In a country where there is really no state owned museum of contemporary art, an exhibition such as this one speaks volumes of the mission this private museum has set for itself to showcase and re-define contemporary art in the region.

On view from today is Difficult Loves , a trilogy of exhibitions curated by the Director and Chief Curator of KNMA, Roobina Karode. This includes the largest retrospective ever of the late Nasreen Mohamedi, an artist whose minimal works leave an unforgettable impression on the viewer, a tribute to India’s Frida Kahlo, Amrita Sher-Gil, and a group exhibition featuring iconic installation works of seven leading contemporary  women artists – Ranjani Shettar, Anita Dube, Sheba Chhachhi, Bharti Kher, Dayanita Singh, Sheela Gowda and Sonia Khurana. My personal favorite is Sheba Chhachhi’s Water Diviner, a version of which I first saw at the National Museum of Natural History in 48’c public. art.ecology curated by Pooja Sood and organized by the South Asian Network of Goethe Institutes in 2008. This series of shows promises to be spectacular. Not to miss at all!

KNMA exhibition

Tomorrow, the museum will be hosting two talks under the Critical Collective Symposia conceptualized and organized by veteran Delhi based critic and curator, Gayatri Sinha. The first of these is panel discussion between renowned South African contemporary artist, William Kentridge and Indian veterans, Vivan Sundaram and Nalini Malani. The second one is a talk by UK based art historian, TJ Demos, who is best known for his published work on the conjunction of art and politics.

KNMA talkThe India Art Fair always ends with the opening of an exhibition at the Devi Art Foundation. This time, it will the third and last edition of the Sarai Reader, an exhibition conceptualized by the Devi Art Foundation and Raqs Media Collective. Sarai Reader 9 is a nine month long project envisaged to draw on ‘exhibition’ as an evolving process, introducing new forms of creative thinking and methodologies. Invitations were open to anyone and everyone with an interesting idea and an engaging means of presentation, limited to a fixed duration and applicable within a space. The first  episode opened for viewing on 13 October, 2012, followed by another on 15 December last year. Read more about these episodes. This current episode will be on view until April 16, 2013. For more information, click here.

Devi Art Foundation - Sarai Reader

All the activity is not limited to Delhi only. Mumbai will see the opening of the first ever exhibition of William Kentridge’s work in India hosted by Volte Gallery. Of South African descent, Kentridge has exhibited worldwide in major venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York. His works mostly deal with subjects of apartheid and colonialism. This show featuring Kentridge’s eight multichannel projection installation, sculptures, drawings, tapestries, videos and prints, promises to be a blockbuster. The exhibition will be on view from February 6 to March 20, 2013.

William Kentrdige @ Volte Gallery

Guggenheim Museum’s South and Southeast Asian Exhibition

January 27, 2013

Medha Kapur of Saffronart on an upcoming exhibition of Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia at The Guggenheim Museum. 

Mumbai: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, one of the world’s most renowned museums, will host the exhibition ‘No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia’. This inaugural exhibition of the  Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative presents works by 22 artists from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It is a five-year program involving curatorial residencies, touring exhibitions and new acquisitions. After New York, the exhibition will be travel to venues in Singapore and Hong Kong. All the works featuring in the show have been acquired by the museum and will become part of its permanent collection.

The exhibition includes works by Tayeba Begum Lipi, one of Bangladesh’s leading contemporary artists, Filipino multidisciplinary artist Poklong Anading, Indian multidisciplinary artist Shilpa Gupta and more. Works showcased in this exhibit will vary across a range of paintings, sculptures, photography, video, works on paper and installations.

Here is a selection of the artworks that will be on show:

Tayeba Begum Lipi -“Love Bed”

Tayeba Begum Lipi -“Love Bed”
Image courtesy: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=265185

Norberto Roldan F-16, 2012

Norberto Roldan
F-16, 2012
Image courtesy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Poklong Anading Counter Acts, 2004

Poklong Anading
Counter Acts, 2004
Image courtesy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Arin Dwihartanto Sunaryo Volcanic Ash Series #4, 2012

Arin Dwihartanto Sunaryo
Volcanic Ash Series #4, 2012
Image courtesy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

The Ghost of Mohammed Bin Qasim

Bani Abidi
The Ghost of Mohammed Bin Qasim, 2006
Image courtesy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

‘Radical Terrain’ at the Rubin Museum of Art

January 17, 2013

Josheen Oberoi shares a note on the ongoing ‘Radical Terrain’ exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York

New York: In November 2011, the Rubin Museum of Art opened a three-part exhibition of modernist art from India. The thematic series, curated by the museum’s Assistant Curator Beth Citron, started with an exhibition titled Body Unbound focusing on figuration, followed by Approaching Abstraction. The final installment, Radical Terrain currently on view, opened in November 2012 and examines the genre of landscape in post independent India. Interestingly, this third exhibition also features contemporary artists, not all from India, whose praxis is centered within a broad definition of landscape. The resultant dialogue adds an incredible depth to the experience of viewing both the modernist and contemporary works on exhibit.

The museum also has an ongoing Artists on Art series which sees Assistant Curator Beth Citron in an informal conversation with international contemporary artists. Currently this series features the contemporary artists from the Radical Terrain exhibition. You can find the schedule for these talks here.

You can read Holland Cotter’s New York Times review of the exhibition here. It is a great, informative read as always.

Watch this space for more of our thoughts on the exhibition. Till then, enjoy a few images of the show and please go visit!

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Across the South of Asia: A Symposium in Honor of Robert L. Brown (San Diego, Jan 18-20, 2013)

January 4, 2013

Manjari Sihare shares details of a forthcoming symposium honoring the scholarship of renowned South and South East Asian Art Scholar, Robert L. Brown

SDMA-LogoNew York: The San Diego Museum of Art is gearing up to host a large symposium of South Asian Art from January 18th through 20th, 2013. The symposium is being held to honor the scholarship of Robert L. Brown, Curator of Southeast Asian Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art, UCLA. Prominent scholars from across the world will present illustrated lectures on this genre in honor of their mentor and colleague. A brief biography of Professor Brown accompanying the e-invite encapsulates the length and breadth of his genius.

After receiving his Ph.D. in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1981, Robert Brown worked for several years as a curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In 1986 he returned to UCLA as Professor of Indian and Southeast Asian Art History. In 2001, he was reappointed as a curator at LACMA, a position that he holds concurrently with his UCLA professorship. In the same way that Robert Brown’s career has bridged the institutions of the art museum and the research university, his scholarship has also extended across various geographical boundaries and chronological periods. His research has addressed topics ranging from the visual traditions of 1st century BCE Central Asia to 20th century colonial historiography. Much of his work has focused on the Buddhist and Hindu artistic traditions that flourished during key historical periods in what are now present-day Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia. His particular concern with the nature of artistic influence between India and Southeast Asia, and also between early Southeast Asian cultures themselves, have contributed greatly to the present understanding of artistic and cultural adaptation and exchange in these regions. His various essays, which present important perspectives on such subjects as pilgrimage, narrative, sacred space, ritual, divinity, relics, the body, miracles, and aesthetics, have also, in their interdisciplinary and cross-national emphases, provided a model of scholarship to his many students over the years. The papers in this symposium, which cover a wide range of subjects, reflect the enduring impact of Robert Brown’s teaching and intellectual generosity upon the work of his colleagues and former students. To learn more about Prof. Brown, click here.

domainsofwonder @ SDMA MuseumThe San Diego Museum of Art has an extensive collection of South Asian paintings and manuscripts bequeathed by their dedicated trustee, Edwin Binney 3rd.  The Edward Binney Collection is considered to be encyclopedic and unparalleled in any other assemblage of Indian paintings in the United States. In terms of scope and depth, it includes works from nearly every region, time period, religious sect, and court in India, as well as relevant neighboring countries. The symposium is sponsored by the Asian Arts Council and the Committee for the Arts of the Indian Subcontinent (CAIS) at the San Diego Museum of Art. The Committee for the Arts of the Indian Subcontinent (CAIS), established in 2003, is particular supports the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection and works to enhance the appreciation of all the arts of India.

View the symposium scheduled here.