A top curatorial collaborative from India in Paris

The curatorial collaborative Clark House Initiative based in Mumbai will be in residence at Kadist, Paris, from March to May 2013, presenting the work of artists Padmini Chettur, Prajakta Potnis and Zamthingla Ruivah from May to July 2013. They participated in Seminary Something You Should Know last month.

Clark House Initiative was established in 2010 by Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma as a curatorial collaborative concerned with ideas of freedom. Zasha Colah co-founded blackrice in 2008 in Nagaland, and the Clark House Initiative in Bombay in 2010, after studying art history at Oxford University and curatorial studies at the RCA, London.

She was the curator of modern Indian art at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation at the CSMVS museum (2008-2011), and was head of Public Programs at the National Gallery of Modern Art (2004-2005) in Mumbai. In 2012 she co-edited 'In Search of Vanished Blood' a monograph on artist Nalini Malani for documenta 13, and she curated two exhibitions of Burmese art, 'Yay-Zeq: Two Burmese Artists Meet Again' at ISCP New York and 'I C U  JEST' in Kochi.

Sumesh Sharma's practice is informed by cultural perspectives of political and economic history. Histories of communities in India, language religion and politics in Francophone Africa, and immigrant identities in Europe, form part of his research. He was part of the second edition of the Gwangju Biennale International Curators Programme 2010 in South Korea. In 2011 he curated the 5th Ayodhya Film Festival, 'Simon Liddiment', 'Published in Dissent'. In 2012 he curated 'Arranging Chairs for Ai Weiwei', an exhibition at Clark House, and 'Chicko: This used to be my hometown' as a collateral exhibition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Kadist Art Foundation encourages the contribution of the arts to society, conducting programs primarily with artists represented in its collection to promote their role as cultural agents. Kadist's collections and productions reflect the global scope of contemporary art, and its programs develop collaborations between Kadist's local contexts (Paris, San Francisco) and artists, curators and art institutions worldwide.