A world-renowned curator on a study trip to India

Dr Barbara J. Scheuermann, an independent curator-writer based in Berlin, is recently on a visit to India to understand contemporary art trends. She has earlier visited to India on a couple of occasions, albeit as a tourist. This time around, she is engaged in deep interactions to grasp contemporary art practices.

Her ongoing curatorial visit, starting with New Delhi and Kolkata, moves next to Vadodara, Mumbai, and Bangalore. In Delhi she looked into the practice of young artists like Joydip Sengupta, Rohini Devasher and Aditya Pande. She just had an interactive talk session ‘Through the Peephole: How to Approach Contemporary Art from India’ courtesy CIMA and the Goethe Institute.

Her views provided a fascinating perspective of an aware westerner’s understanding of contemporary Indian art. She faced a series of questions and posed as many. Scheuerman offered a captivating collage of intriguing interpersonal experiences in backdrop of Indian art market, which ‘has decidedly expanded in the last decade or so’.

Her views provided a fascinating perspective of an aware westerner’s understanding of contemporary Indian art.Dr. Barbara J. Scheuermann took her degree at the University of Cologne. A curator at Tate Modern, before completing her dissertation, she was assistant curator at Haus der Kunst in Munich and at K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. Since 2005 she has also been writing as a freelance art critic for several renowned publications like Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and Kunstzeitung.

Once Scheuerman was introduced to works by Dayanita Singh, Anish Kapoor, Subodh Gupta, N.S. Harsha, and Thukral & Tagra, she delved deeper into their art processes. However, her understanding of the very nature of Indian art remained in a flux. Given the vast and varied cultural templates, it’s yet to settle down. The common streak in it that she witnessed was the usage of day-to-day objects.Scheuerman’s Indian sojourn, given her penchant for narratives, sure will offer her several curatorial possibilities.