A snapshot of ‘Midnight's Children’ at Studio la Città in Verona, Italy

Three of India’s most important artists of this generation, Riyas Komu, Jagannath Panda, and Hema Upadhyay featured in a significant group show courtesy Studio la Città in Verona, Italy. The title of the exhibition, derived from world-renowned writer Salman Rushdie’s controversial fictional account, drew a critical applause.

Over the years, Studio la Città has looked to deepen its interest in contemporary Indian art (with many study-trips organized to the country); the first visible outcome of this engagement was group show ‘India Crossing’ held in 2008, followed by several solo. Today, in the firm belief that globalization is a positive challenge and not merely a convenient label to act as a substitute for the typical ‘internationality’ of the modern age, its curatorial team has continued investigating a few generations of evolving Indian art in order to do away with facile exoticism, issues related to ethnicity, and labels that are so widespread as to be banal: like simply being Indian…

This thought process well reflected in its latest curatorial venture as well as the choice of artists for it. A curatorial note explained: “The participating artists respond to deeper criteria than just belonging to a particular nation (though that too has its significance): the peculiarities of the three demonstrate, on the one hand, a mutual cultural feedback related to their very roots (among other things, they all belong to in Mumbai); on the other hand they are very much interested in new global languages, above all in their evident tendency to ‘narrate’ stories through evocative images and constructions.”

All three are concerned with the concept of sculpture/installations underpinned by mythopoeia, as can be seen in the works specifically created for the show: in the airy installations by Hema Upadhyay, individual and poetical yet probably not without concerns about the condition of women; in the strength of dialectic contrasts shot through with subtle irony in Jagannath Panda’s sculptures and paintings; and in an openly historical and ideological-idealist manner for Riyas Komu.

Incidentally, Hema Upadhyay also presented a major installation ‘Think left, Think right, Think low, Think tight’ at the Aichi Arts Center, Japan.