Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Indian artists at Documenta and elsewhere

Here’s a quick recap of major international shows that revolved around contemporary Indian art in the year gone by:

The grand traveling show, ‘Indian Highway VI’, made its way into Beijing. Underlining the significance of this monumental development, an accompanying note to the show at The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art elaborated, “The arrival of this international touring exhibition in Beijing will mark the most comprehensive presentation of contemporary art from India ever seen in China.” In the form of a road movie across 3 continents (Europe, South America, Asia), each stage reinterpreted the core them to fit changing venues. The culmination of thorough research done across India by curator-duo of Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Gallery directors, and Astrup Fearnley Museum director Gunnar B. Kvaran, the exhibit featured artists known to have made an impact on the international art scene alongside emerging talented practitioners.

One of the world’s most prestigious and keenly awaited art events, the DOCUMENTA (13), was dedicated to holistic artistic research and different forms of imagination, which sought to explore commitment, embodiment, matter, things, and active living largely in connection with, yet not totally subordinated to, theory. Delhi-based Amar Kanwar participated in his third straight Documenta. Nalini Malani showcased her latest ‘video/shadow play, ‘In Search of Vanished Blood’, a huge site-responsive installation that employed reverse-painted mylar sheets on many rotating cylinders, creating a narrative video frieze. The Karachi-born and Delhi-based practitioner, Bani Abidi, presented a film installation ‘At a 30 Degree Angle’, whereas Tejal Shah produced a new work for the prestigious art event.

A grand exhibition that coincided with the 2012 Olympic Games was hosted at London-based Grosvenor Vadehra. ‘2012: A Further Global Encounter’ included the best of Contemporary art from India. It explored contemporary issues and ideas not only local and specific to India, but those that look to deal with aspects of the global panorama. On the other hand, ‘Approaching Abstraction’ was the second of a three-part series at the Rubin Museum. It examined art from post-independence and post-Partition India. Building on the explorations between abstraction and figuration begun in ‘The Body Unbound’, it distinguished streak of abstraction in modernist Indian art from that in Euro-American modernism.

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