Retaining the regional flavor to art

A series of contemporary positive developments may pave the way for art lovers and collectors to move to the serene South India.

Sunitha Kumar Emmart of Bangalore’s GallerySKE founder makes it a point to show at least 5-10 artists in a year. One of the recent shows featured Škoda Prize-winner Navin Thomas who had on view live birds and even dead insects. According to the gallerist, the idea is not to display pretty pictures alone.

For record, the gallerist began with just three artists almost a decade ago, and now represents many of the country’s major names like Sudarshan Shetty and Bharti Kher. Emmart has been quoted as saying: “The troubled market is obviously on everyone’s head. However, people are quietly creating new work here in Bangalore; it’s a space wherein they can be truly productive. There needs to be that core idea of building one common language; what and how does it really matter if it’s south Indian or north Indian art?”

Yet, concerted efforts to expose the tradition of south Indian art to the rest of the country can work both ways. For instance, Apparao is set to bring two of young Chennai-based artists, Janardhanan and Sunil Sree to New Delhi for the first time ever sometime this year.

Ashish Thapar and Ebenezer Singh from Chennai started Singh & Thapar Projects about four months ago in the capital city. It’s a space in Connaught Place for them to present lesser-known artists from south India like Aparajithan Adimoolam and Sharmila Mohandas. A recent event, Art Chennai, and the keenly awaited Kochi-Muziris Biennale point to the broader trend. A series of performance, talks and exhibitions mark the events. .

The former consisted of different events at multiple sites, such as the Taj Coromandel that hosted a conference plus an artist residency. The city-based festival included top artists like Atul Dodiya, Nilima Sheikh, Jitish Kallat, C. Douglas, M. Senathipathi, and Arpita Singh.