‘Listen to your Eye’ by Sharmila Samant

A new solo show by renowned artist Sharmila Samant takes place at Mumbai-based Lakeeren Art Gallery. Elaborating on its theme, a press release poses questions a few that she looks to answer in her series: “How do we see? What is the hidden agenda behind appearances?”

These are the issues that she looks to solve in her monographic show, entitled ‘Listen to your Eye’. In essence, it tries to investigate the core aspect of our viewing and perception process. A press release elaborates: “Comprising of sculptural-installation and neon, her new body of work subverts the materialty of the objects in relation to its function bringing to a fore issues of corruption, notions of progress and making visible the detritus in society through a trompe-l'œil.

Born in 1967, Sharmila Samant studied at the Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, India (1989) plus a Residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1998-99) and the Gasworks Studios in 2000. Her new series, ‘Listen to your eyes…’ could be viewed as a cautionary note of events taking place in our world that need to be urgent addressed as they pose consequences for us if they continue to go unaddressed and unarticulated in the future.

She has also featured in several national and international shows including ‘Century City’ - Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, The Tate Modern, London, UK; Liverpool Biennale, UK (2002); ‘Sub terrain’, House of World Culture, Berlin (2003); ‘The Werkleitz Biennale: Common Property’, Volkspark, Halle/Saale, Germany (2004), ‘Edge of Desire: Recent art in India’, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani; and ‘Indian Summer’ Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts de Paris, Paris, curated Henry-Claude Cousseau, Deepak Ananth, Jany Lauga 2005, Subcontingent The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rabaudengo, Torino, Italy, curate

Exhibiting after a gap of 15 years in the city, she retrospectively draws on her earlier projects continuing her critique of globalization, genetically modified foods and commentary on current socio-political undertakings.