Saturday, October 27, 2012

A prestigious prize for India’s influential artists

The Škoda Prize is now considered among the most prestigious and influential ones in contemporary Indian art. Its organizers have just announced the long list of select artists for the 3rd edition.

Those selected for the long list are  Aditi Joshi, Aditi Avinash Kulkarni, Adip Dutta, CAMP (Ashok Sukumaran & Shaina Anand), Jagannath Panda, Hema Upadhyay, Manmeet Devgun, L N Tallur, Mariam Suhail, Priyanka Choudhary, Praneet Soi, Sharmila Samant, Rohini Devasher, Shilpa Gupta, Srinivasa Prasad ,T Venkanna, Tushar Joag, Vishal Dar, Zakkir Hussain and Yardena Kurulkar. CAMP is the lone collaboration project that forms part of the prize nominees this year.

The top 20 have been chosen on the basis of solos held in the country over the past one year. Solos for them include those hosted in Delhi / NCR, Bangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai. Mariam Suhail, a Pakistani citizen resident staying in India qualified under the new norms that let all those domiciled in India apply for the prize). The jury panel is chaired by Geeta Kapur, eminent art historian-critic.

Regarding the selection The Škoda Prize (Director of Art) Girish Shahane, mentions: “This year choosing the top-20 was even more difficult and as a result of it quite a few good solo shows couldn’t be accommodated. The list is a very good blend of emerging talent and established names.”  The works reflect both diversity and depth of contemporary Indian art practices. They include innovative site specific installations, video installations, prints, drawings, photo collages, paintings, and performance art.

The emerging artists in the top-20 list this year include Mariam Suhail (installations for ‘Breakdown of shorter concerns’, Gallery SKE), Rohini Devasher (video installations for ‘Permutation’, Nature Morte), Aditi Joshi (installation for ‘New Works’, Gallery Maskara), Aditi Avinash Kulkarni (‘Alienation of the space’, Seven Art), and Priyanka Choudhary  (‘Tetanus Midas’, Gallery Maskara), Yardena Kurulkar (‘Transience’, Gallery BMB). The top 20 names have been chosen by the jury panel including the co‐founder of Devi Art, Anupam Poddar, and leading artist Sheela Gowda.

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