ART COMES ON SITE PART II
Getting back to the physicality of art, a group of India’s leading galleries Chemould Prescott Road and Experimenter come together with an exhibition this March.
Desmond Lazaro’s gold and pigment laden Dymaxion Map III creates a non-hierarchical comprehension of the world, absent of embedded cultural identifiers of up-down, North-South.
This cartographic revisitation is complemented through Shilpa Gupta’s 100 Hand Drawn Maps of my Country documenting the differences in people’s idea of territorial belonging versus the reality experienced by them in Ecuador, India, South Korea, and Israel/Palestine.
“In the often disputed battleground of global history writing and history making, showcasing one’s own history is not an easy task, nor is it a unilateral one. This curated presentation of drawings, sculpture, textile and mixed media installations by Chemould Prescott Road balances this very delicate tension of multiple vantage points of identity, memory and territory whilst steadfastly holding crucial space for the South in global narrative building.”
-Shireen Gandhy
Mithu Sen’s Nothing Lost In Translation insists on widening this story telling of public consciousness by creating ambiguous forms on Japanese kozo paper, not restricted by immediate locality, or gender, race, caste, class.
This continuing paradox of certain realities being cultural equalizers, such as endless, yet finite, consciousness experienced while sleeping, is captured through Jitish Kallat’s The Infinite Episode. The restful slumber of it is scaled down sculptural animal forms is in contrast to the dense pigment dyed animals and birds in Noah’s Ark clamoring at the bottom of this descending scroll-tent in Lavanya Mani’s The Ark Animals of the World Complain to the Raven (after Mishkin). They are sparing no one the urgency of this approaching ecological distress.
“A precarious visual equilibrium emerges to indicate a time that is at the precipice of change. Artists like PrabhakarPachpute proposes a possible afterlife of objects and peoplewho inhabit the landscape today, where an alternate legacy exists or even calls toaction for revolution.”
-PrateekRaja, co-founder of Experimenter
As part of On Site, Experimenter presents Do You Know How to Start A Fire, a group exhibition of intergenerational women artists featuring works by Ayesha Sultana, Biraaj Dodiya, Radhika Khimji and Reba Hore.
Prabhakar Pachpute presents a solo project, Lone Runner’s Laboratory. Through a new series of oil paintings, Pachpute continues his inquiry about exploitation of land and mineral resources in which he imagines the future of a post-mined and post-industrial landscape.
Jole Dobe Na (Those Who Do Not Drown), a film by Naeem Mohaiemen premieres in India at the Delhi exhibition. The film was conceived in response to a prompt given by Raqs Media Collective (for the Yokohama Triennial 2020) to think about the afterlife of caregivers.
Experimenter also presents a group exhibition with works by Ayesha Sultana, Julien Segard, Reba Hore, Rathin Barman and Prabhakar Pachpute at the ‘Drawing Salon’. The salon has been described as a fertile e ground for experimentation and testing the boundaries of thought, drawing is often the initial scaffolding on which practices rely as a point of departure.
Clearly the month of March has much to give us to view and ponder over and one looks forward to the renewed possibility of interacting and viewing artwork in the physical realm once again. Visit Bikaner House to catch up!
Text by Georgina Maddox
Images courtesy: Artists and galleries featured
Find more about Artists and Galleries:
https://www.gallerychemould.com/
https://instagram.com/experimenterkol?igshid=tlxrt1qhxo1e
https://instagram.com/chemouldprescottroad?igshid=bhqygr0yyhps
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10sKuBdlwOaxK_M5oi9GUBuXCdNhR7In_/view?usp=sharing
