‘Onlookers’ is title of a solo show of promising artist Ashutosh Bhardwaj at The Guild Gallery, Mumbai. It addresses his ongoing concerns with the agency involved in establishing clichés, stereotypes or ‘the general view’. An accompanying note elaborates: “The artist implies that given the plethora of communicative possibilities and the omnipresence of social and traditional media, the agency of the recipients of this continuous flow of information is diminished. The choices of agency or its applicability are slowly being eroded so much so that, these choices are increasingly fragmented, which in turn aids information fatigue and endangers activity.
Furthermore this second hand viewing of ourselves (the subject), although in many ways simply aspirational is nonetheless passive. Our agency as subjects is reduced and subjective to collectivized opinions which themselves are second hand and we are bound to become Onlookers to our own mode of existence. At the same time, the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’, or ‘subject’ and ‘object’ implies that the responsibility of agency itself is fluid and given that the distinction is no longer valid as we create, recreate and propagate our own content (identities) agency as a term for differentiation becomes problematic.
Within this background, Bhardwaj brings to the fore the subject and its idolization. In Cannibals, he employs within the frame of a television set, a self-portrait of himself enacting various roles, set up as a silent tableau where the arrangement of the elements within the frame stages a mock yet ominous picture of the plight of the subject as seen and exhibited. This he seems to imply is also the act of experience, where gathering bits of information, visual or otherwise, forms an identity and the only precarious agency is one of choice.
Born in 1981, Bhardwaj obtained his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U, Baroda 2004. A recipient of the National scholarship 2003-05 and the Nasreen Mohamedi award, he took part in Peer 04, Residency at Khoj, New Delhi, 2004 and Artist Residency at The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2009. In 2008 Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi presented his solo show Sleep Walker.
Furthermore this second hand viewing of ourselves (the subject), although in many ways simply aspirational is nonetheless passive. Our agency as subjects is reduced and subjective to collectivized opinions which themselves are second hand and we are bound to become Onlookers to our own mode of existence. At the same time, the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’, or ‘subject’ and ‘object’ implies that the responsibility of agency itself is fluid and given that the distinction is no longer valid as we create, recreate and propagate our own content (identities) agency as a term for differentiation becomes problematic.
Within this background, Bhardwaj brings to the fore the subject and its idolization. In Cannibals, he employs within the frame of a television set, a self-portrait of himself enacting various roles, set up as a silent tableau where the arrangement of the elements within the frame stages a mock yet ominous picture of the plight of the subject as seen and exhibited. This he seems to imply is also the act of experience, where gathering bits of information, visual or otherwise, forms an identity and the only precarious agency is one of choice.
Born in 1981, Bhardwaj obtained his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U, Baroda 2004. A recipient of the National scholarship 2003-05 and the Nasreen Mohamedi award, he took part in Peer 04, Residency at Khoj, New Delhi, 2004 and Artist Residency at The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2009. In 2008 Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi presented his solo show Sleep Walker.
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