‘Where’s the official Indian pavilion?’

Pointing to ‘lack of India in the ongoing Venice Biennale’, art scholar and expert Vishakha N Desai questions in a column, if Estonia and Angola can showcase themselves to the thriving global art world, why India fails to do?

She starts off by mentioning in an article in The Indian Express: “As we were perusing the Angola pavilion and picking up our share of printed photographs from the award-winning installation at the Venice Biennale, my American friend stopped and asked with a surprised look: "Where is the Indian pavilion? Why is India so glaringly absent here?" The questions are clearly discomforting.

Over the four days she spent at the Biennale, she heard this sentiment expressed by many of her art literati friends from across the world. Making a stoic point, she adds: “There are 88 national pavilions in the historical Giardini and scattered throughout the city. Close to a thousand artists from all parts of the world are represented in exhibitions, national pavilions and collateral events. Some 35,000 art leaders and enthusiasts have gone through the Biennale in the first few days of the preview alone.

“Around 5,00,000 people are expected to visit this extravaganza by the time it closes in November. Most countries realize the enormous opportunity to project their cultural strength at this oldest, largest and most prestigious global art event. So, Estonia and Angola can showcase themselves to the thriving global art world, why India fails to do?’

As she was asked this question, it was interesting to hear the plausible responses from some of her colleagues. "Is it because the Indian government does not want to spend this kind of money when there are such pressing issues of poverty at home?" asked a well meaning academic colleague.

"It is embarrassing that our government can't even get its act together to pay enough attention to the country's most important soft power tool, its vibrant contemporary art scene, to present it to the world," remarked a well known collector of contemporary Indian art, lamenting the fact that the effort expended for the previous Biennale was not followed up this time. She repeated the commonly heard refrain that in India, all big things happen these days in spite of the government, rather than with the support of the government.

Key milestones of a prominent photo-performance’s career

• Known to be an innovative artist, who is keen on experimenting with her artistic devices and strategies, Pushpamala N incorporates popular culture symbols into her creations. She adopts popular personas and ironic roles to raise and examine issues related to gender, place and history. The ironic aspect is particularly sharp in her photo-based installations and projections.

• Pushpamala N, born in 1956 in Bangalore, studied at Bangalore University, and then grasped nuances of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, where she completed her Bachelors and later her Masters degree. She is the recipient of the National Award (1984); the gold medal at the Sixth New Delhi Triennale (1986); the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship for residency (1992-93); and the Senior Fellowship, Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (1995-97).

• The artist’s work has been widely exhibited internationally. Among her selective participations are `New Indian Art`, Manchester Art Gallery, UK (2002); `Ways of Resisting`, Sahmat, New Delhi (2002); `Century City` Tate Modern, London, UK (2001); `Moving Ideas` Hoopoe Curatorial, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada (2001); Open Circle International Workshop, Mumbai (2000).

• The artist launched her career with sculpting, exhibiting interest in narrative figuration. Gradually, she moved to photo and video performance art, casting her own body as different characters and personae. Blending autobiographical notes with surreal aesthetics and dramatics, her works superimpose polyvalent layers of femininity, humor, and guise. Even while transgressing the limitations of mimetic figural representation she has faithfully stuck to the narration of the female form. Her work tends to engage with theories of postcolonial identity coupled with feminist historical gaze.

• Her art practice that never quite resolve the mysteries posed as the probably do not want to.Applauding her work and putting it a broader context, The New York Times art critic, Holland Cotter, had noted on eve of NY solo debut: “Photography and filmmaking made its way in India immediately after their invention in Europe. This is one reason South Asia has a long history of sophisticated and quality work in both media. Pushpamala N. takes account of that history and makes it her own.”

Art, for me, is the ultimate bliss…’

Summing up his philosophy, Krishen Khanna has once stated: “Art, for me, is the ultimate bliss. Art can provide you with the metaphysical answers you have been looking for even whilst you are involved in its creation. They call it drawing. I really have no name for it. It's a compulsion, an itch. The more I scratch, the more I want to continue. It is enjoyable but it can also hurt when nothing emerges but an incomprehensible mess.”

In his series put up as part of a grand retrospective show in 2010 at LKA, Delhi, this largely self-taught artist rewound the clock back to his pre-partition life in Lahore - largely a recollection of events from his early childhood, when fight between Indian freedom fighters and the British rulers was at its peak.

There were large format oil compositions done in monochrome that serve as an extension of his memories in Lahore’s cosmopolitan settings. He used monochrome because, to put it in the artist’s words, if there’s something I wish to say, it's best to avoid the dynamics of color.

The series also comprised an oil drawing of an old homeopathic doctor and an ardent Congressman, Gurbaksh Rai, bidding goodbye to his family members after being arrested by the British police. One of his canvases depicts his uncle going to a neighboring town along with his family. He was stopped in the way by the police, and threatened to shoot him. Fortunately, they didn't! Another of his compositions is about the blood-filled violence after the partition.

Born in Lyallpur (now Faislabad, Pakistan), he first studied at the Mayo School of Art, Lahore. He came to Shimla during the days of India’s partition. After arriving there, he joined the Grindlays Bank in Mumbai, and later became part of the Progressive Artists’ Group. He was awarded the Rockefeller Fellowship in 1962 and was also Artist-in-Residence at the American University, Washington (1963-64). He was awarded the Padma Shree in 1996.  The veteran artist's dynamic oeuvre is a testimony to his enriching art and life.

‘L'exigence de la saudade’ courtesy Kadist Art Foundation

A thematic event, ‘L'exigence de la saudade’, curated by Sumesh Sharma and Zasha Colah of Mumbai-Clark House Initiative in conjunction with Paris-based Kadist Art Foundation, features a trio of talented personalities artists from India – visual artist Prajakta Potnis, Padmini Chettur, a contemporary dancer, and master weaver Zamthingla Ruivah known for creations conceptually engaged with remnant cultural forms so as to reinvent them in the present, and not merely as endangered traditions.

Nalini Malani, Jean Bhownagary, Maarten Visser and Krishna Reddy are other participants alongside intervention in the public space by Prabhakar Pachpute and Justin Ponmany.  Their presentation together builds a complex and bewildering backdrop of the Indian subcontinent - too culturally conjoined with everything else, for any sense of nation to arise, as an accompanying note elaborates: “In this term saudade, as in the name ‘Bombay’ (bom baía), is heard the persistence of a Portuguese past. Exigency and saudade, retain the tension of opposites; the consciousness of the past in the present, which permits the envisaging of what is still to come.”

Chettur looks to displace the captivating choreographic tradition to a mesmerizing minimalistic idiom that visually translates philosophical concepts of time and space as they relate to contemporary experience. Ruivah revives the rich tradition of weaving to narrate the events of a community from the north-east of India.

The installation skillfully realized in situ by artist Prajakta Potnis is an outcome of her observation of the various different types of architecture, which compose a city. She echoes the social imaginary of the inhabitants through fissures or peeling walls. The works in the exhibition are juxtaposed with those of certain artists from India living in Paris more than four decades ago.

Malani described her time there as a ‘prise de conscience’. She lends to the exhibit a small papier mache head made in 1971. A sculpture by Krishna Reddy is an eidetic memory of students outside his window in the city in 1968. Bhownagary’s ceramic mask, also made in Paris, is included in the showcase.

‘India fails to use art for projecting its vibrant society globally.’

The president emerita of Asia Society, Vishakha N Desai feels the missing presence of India at the ongoing Venice Biennale reflects a broader issue of the country's global aspirations and cohesive strategy for their meticulous implementation. Also, a special advisor to the president of Columbia University and to the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation & Museum, her opinions expressed in a just published article in The Indian Express deserve serious consideration as underlined below:

• In the foreign policy circles in the West, one often hears that compared to China, it is unclear how India wants to project its nascent global power status or use it effectively in the dramatically changing world order. When I asked that very question to a senior retired diplomat, he was clear that India didn't have to create such a strategy. As he saw it, the world would eventually realize India's position and give it the kind of respect it deserves.
  
• One could sense that barely hiding behind that smugness was defensiveness about India's role in the world. India should not have to prove its global power but, instead, the world should recognize it. Ironically, this has meant that one of India's greatest assets, its arts and culture, from Bollywood movies and ever-present Yoga studios to its vibrant contemporary art scene, are not effectively utilized as powerful tools in the global strategy of the country.
  
• Indian artists are thriving at home and are beginning to make a name for themselves abroad. The prestigious Hauser and Wirth gallery selected Subodh Gupta as their artist of choice for the Venice presentation, and the highly accomplished Dayanita Singh was selected as one of the four artists representing Germany (in the French pavilion).
  
• A fine young artist, Prabhavathi Meppayil showed up in the main curated show, The Encyclopaedic Palace. Clearly, the artists will continue to find support all over the world on the basis of the strength of their work. But, arguably, the real loser is the country that does not see the potential of art as a powerful vehicle for projecting its vibrant society on the global stage.
  
• One of the people that posed the question was a professor from London who has initiated a project of examining the social value of the arts in the global arena. "India has vibrant cultural practices and can use it effectively to capture the hearts and minds of the global citizenry." Will the country actually realise this incredible potential to create a unique role in the global arena?

Aditya Pande’s solo show at Artemons Contemporary, Austria

Apart from ‘L'exigence de la saudade’ at Paris-based Kadist Art Foundation and ‘The Rising Phoenix: A Dialogue Between Modern & Contemporary Indian Art’ show proposed at The Queens Museum of Art, another India-oriented showcase that is drawing international attention is Aditya Pande’s solo show at Artemons Contemporary, Austria

A series of intricate works by talented artists woven around specific themes are indeed gripping. They exude controlled spontaneity, elegantly grotesque, intricately ordered anarchy and digital primitivism. They balance every movement within the complex composition with its opposite, combining the skills of printmaking and drawing with the surfaces of painting as well as photography.

His digital, mixed-media collages invariably dazzle us with their energetic explosion of colors and their intricacy of lines. The graphic designs are physically altered after printing to create a surface that blurs between two dimensions and three. He economically creates the impression of deep recesses with sparing collage elements. Only after a closer, one can decipher which elements lie flat and those coming off the surface.

Born in Lucknow in 1976, he received a degree in Graphic Design at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad in 2001. Among his other recent exhibitions are 'Half-Life', Chatterjee and Lal, Mumbai (2012) and  'Happy Birthday', Nature Morte, Gurgaon (2011) apart from group exhibitions and fairs like 'Panoplism', Nature Morte, Delhi (2013); 'WAR ZONE: Indian Contemporary Art', Artemons Contemporary, Das Kunstmuseum, Austria (2012); and  'The Phenomenal World', Otto Zoo, Geneva (2012).

A curatorial essay reveals: “Aditya Pande's work mixes computer graphics with painting, drawing and collage, blurring the lines between techniques and imagery. Scribbled animals are rendered in a high-tech computer language and juxtaposed against buoyant forms and colors. Also a partner in Tota Design, which specializes in product and graphic design, his painterly works owe freshness to his unorthodox approach and frame of references.”

An artist who unravels power structures dictating today’s society

Vandana Jain is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. After studying art at New York University, and Textiles at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she was invited by prestigious venues such as Momenta, NY; The Queens Museum, Flushing, NY; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN; Koffler Center; Toronto; Grey Noise Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan; and With Space, Beijing, China.

Among the awards she has won are the Emerging Artist’s Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2007, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency in 2008-9, and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2010. In her first ever monographic exhibit in India, she undertakes nothing less than a critique of global capitalism. Located in New York, the headquarters of world commerce, she draws on her immediate environment of multinationals that consume and thrive in an environment of excess and self indulgence.

Taking for granted the new empire of capitalism, she questions the legitimacy of laissez-faire as an inherently self-correcting and perpetuating mechanism, one that allows monopolies and 1st world nations to thrive and control the market dynamics. The corporate logo recurs often in her work. In ‘Logo Alphabet’ (2003-11), a series of 26 hand-embroidered panels, she depicts a logo for each letter in the English alphabet. By this undertaking she asserts the global semiotic language as a defining force, one that through its form dictates the content of what can be said and how.

By using traditional or labor-intensive image making methods, she offsets the ubiquitous mass-production, thereby creating a counter-narrative that comments on the exploitation of labor. Her series of small cross-stitch embroideries represent various international political and economic groupings, such as the G20. She is interested in examining how these abstracted national symbols come together to visualize larger political and economic bodies, which dominate the international platform.

Her digital work ‘Invisible Hand’, an anagram of corporate logos, acts as a hieroglyphic wherein the de-codification of the logos themselves reveals the reality of their intent. Through these explorations, the artist seeks to unravel the power structures that dictate our present society, and therefore present an opportunity for change and intervention value of work.