‘Seven Contemporaries'

‘Seven Contemporaries’ is the title of a group show on view at KNMA, Delhi.  Curated by Roobina Karode, it features works by Anita Dube, Bharti Kher, Dayanita Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Sheba Chachhi, Sheila Gowda, Sonia Khurana. We take a quick look at the practices and philosophy of different participating artists in this show:

Blending traditional and modern crafts

Ranjani Shettar's usage of traditional and modern crafts to sculpt natural and industrial materials accentuates the tenuous relationship between industry and nature. She resolves this by uncovering the beauty within their co existence and in the collaboration between man and nature. In creating environments with sculpture and installation, she fuses the two realms together with dynamic yet graceful forms and textures, revealing the spectacle and magnanimity of natural phenomena. Seduced by their simplicity and openness, our experience of her works yields humility and a surrender to their splendor. Her materials yield to unfamiliar realizations.

Analyzing different aspects of life and existence

Anita Dube is interested in different aspects of life and existence - politics, gender and sexuality – that matter to her. She strives to explore mysterious unnamed elements that preoccupy us, looking for clear answers. Initially expressing herself as a writer, she gradually started dabbling with colors and materials, something that she found engaging so she took up art as her preferred mode of expression. This was at 30. For the next decade or so, she struggled to prove herself as an artist, but the struggle was worth it…

Drawing from references to the social and cultural context

Initially trained as a painter, since the 1990’s Sheila Gowda has increasingly developed a sculptural and installation practice, employing materials to draw out references to the social and cultural context of India. Her artworks, both sensual and unsettling, conjure some of the darkest aspects of human experience, wherein poetically invested materials evoke. The artist terms them ‘the insidious nature of violence, overt and insidious in our psychic makeup’.

The works are on View at KNMA until 30th November, 2013.