Major shows of video art underline its rising stature

Internationally videos have been around in the mainstream visual culture for a long time now. However animation films as a genre of video making has gained ground recently. Several young emerging artists especially with training in art/design/technology are experimenting and coming up with new genre of works.

1. Mumbai based Guild Gallery presented VAF@The Guild, 2011 curated by JohnyML, revolving around the new concepts of video and animation filmmaking. Explaining the background of this unique project, the curator stated: “With the collapsing boundaries between different art genres more and more interdisciplinary practices get space and appreciation in the field of visual arts as a part of the general cultural production.”
   
   
2. New-Delhi based Gallery Espace recently unveiled the 2nd edition of Video Wednesdays II, collaboration between Gayatri Sinha/ Critical Collective and Shanghai’s Minsheng Art Museum artist/curator Zhou Tiehai. The two brought together new media art from India and China. Incidentally, Video Wednesdays @ Espace was the first ever year long video art shows in 2008-09. On the other hand, the third edition of International Documentary & Short Film Festival (IDSFFK) in Kerala provided a chance to view video art put in the space and context of a film festival.
   
   
3. A unique event at Berlin based Deutsche Guggenheim, entitled ‘Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India’ collated film and video works by some of the innovative media practitioners like Shumona Goel and Shai Heredia, Sonal Jain & Mriganka Madhukaillya of Desire Machine Collective, Amar Kanwar, and Kabir Mohanty.
   
   
4. ‘Once Upon a Time: Fantastic Narratives in Contemporary Video’ focused on how fantastic stories and modern fairytales are represented in modern video art. It investigated how contemporary artists adapt motives and narrative techniques from myths, fables, and fairy tales to mirror current social phenomena and events in recent history.
   
   
5. On the other hand, ‘Indian Highway’ at the Reykjavík Art Museum traced the impact of early technology stretching to the information superhighway, a major contributor to India’s economic progress and to the artistic development. Berlin based Arndt & Partner (ARNDT) hosted Jitish Kallat solo ‘Likewise’, incorporating grotesque-surreal and ironic imagery composed of video, sculpture, photography etc.