‘Concepts & Ideas – 2011’ at CIMA, Kolkata

India is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations; its various communities live in several centuries simultaneously, creating multiple and opposing narratives. Author-thinker Ramachandra Guha in the prologue to his new book, ‘Makers of Modern India’, describes India as the ‘most interesting country in the world.’

The notion of India in the West which is increasingly becoming common place, skims over the peculiarities, oddities and contradictions. The idea is nurtured and spread by even the local media and advertising worlds. This version 2.0 of an increasingly rich and materialistic India is fanned by the demands of politicians and business people driven by commerce, vote banks and market places.

But this foregoes a closer more intimate exploration of the scramble for precious commodities, the rapid dispossession, in recent years, of tribal communities (who are still forest-dwelling) and farmers. The catastrophes quietly going on in the rural interiors is absent in the many books being published and the media.

The larger, more human challenges confronting India are generally avoided; they are neither colorful or vibrant, or suffused with a mystical faith that a dynamic minority of producers and consumers will somehow achieve, social and economic change by ‘trickle down’ effects. This version - the tawdry, the cruel, the melancholic - is recently finding expression in popular cinema and in the visual fine arts.

The three artists in a new exhibition at ‘Concepts & Ideas – 2011’ at Kolkata based CIMA Gallery do not exactly plunge us into this universe. Instead, they make us do what good art is supposed to do – interpret, reveal and makes us witnesses. Each of the three artists examines a silent issue plaguing life and living in India. Sheba Chhachhi looks at the human effects and affect of rapid urbanization and the relationship between myth and ecology. In her work, aesthetics goes together with advocating justice and equity and critiquing contemporary society.

On the other hand, Anjum Singh’s sculptures express her perspectives on urban, metropolitan issues, the chaos, the garbage, the shattering disfigurement of a city and yet how alluring it is for the consumer society in India. Praneet Soi engages with the questions of migration and displacements. He examines parallels which link his practice as a painter to a political approach to subject matter.

(Information courtesy: CIMA, Kolkata)