TO LET THE WORLD IN : Narrative and Beyond in Contemporary Indian Art I VOLUME 1 and 2

About the project:

"To Let The World In" is a two-part film project that looks at a significant period in the history of contemporary Indian art, featuring the work of three generations of visual artists, born over a period of half a century. 

The first volume features intimate conversations with artists born in the 1930, 40s and 50s. The seniors among them marked the return to narrative figuration in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the exhibition titled “Place for People”, which was held in Delhi and Mumbai in 1981. The artists featured in the film are Arpita Singh, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Vivan Sundaram, Nilima Sheikh, Nalini Malani and Sudhir Patwardhan, along with art critic and curator Geeta Kapur, who became an ideologue for this generation. 

The artists talk about their practice and the friendships among the group. While doing so, they fondly invoke the memory of Bhupen Khakhar, the invaluable artist from the group, who passed away in 2003.

The second generation of artists, born in the 1950s, became the interlocutors for the legacy of the narrative-figurative tradition. The artists featured in the film are Ranbir Kaleka, Pushpamala N., Anita Dube and Atul Dodiya.

The second volume of the film features artists born in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The majority of the artists among this group started their practice on the momentous cusp of India’s economic liberalisation and the assertion of religious fundamentalism in politics, which dramatically altered ideological contexts in the country, thereby directly affecting art practice. The artists talk about the crisis in art education in the 1990s and the altered context of art production, with the interest of the international art market in "Indian" art. The artists featured in this volume are Anju Dodiya, Archana Hande, Benitha Perciyal, Sharmila Samant, Parvathi Nayar, Riyas Komu, Tushar Joag, Shilpa Gupta, Gargi Raina, Sumakshi Singh, T.V. Santhosh, Nataraj Sharma, Gigi Scaria, Reena Saini Kallat and Jitish Kallat.

The film was produced by Art Chennai, as a component of their show "To Let The World In: Narrative and Beyond in Contemporary Indian Art", curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, held in Chennai in 2012.

Selections from REGARDING INDIA- Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Videos by Kathryn Myers

Regarding India is a series of videotaped interviews with contemporary Indian artists created by Kathryn Myers, Professor of Art, The University of Connecticut. Over sixty artists will eventually be part of the series, which are available through a website, www.regardingindia.com The project has been supported by grants from the Fulbright Foundation and The Connecticut Commission on Arts and Culture.

Kathryn Myers is a painter and professor of studio art at the University of Connecticut. She has had Fulbright 

Fellowships to India in 2002 and 2011.

 My video is titled "Darshan"  2:47min

                          "Devotion at Dawn"  4:32min

CULT OF THE STREET by Niyati Upadhya

This is a mixed media compilation of 2 bodies of work that each trace the lives of two of Bombay’s street professions: the bone setters and the barbers. The exhibit takes viewers through a compilation of work that explore the city’s streets, which showcases the nature, dynamics and reactions of the people and their business, with the common man,set stage in the by-lanes of Mumbai city.

Bones speak of fragile bodies, mortal remains, healing and restoration form within.Barbers shops speak of beautification of the body, sexuality, male power, and vanity depicted through the curiosity as an on-looker/passer by, to something that is considered to be otherwise private.

The Cult of the Street is a series of visual diaries recording quaint old businesses that continue tonsurvive in a day and age to which they appear unsuited. In the words of the artist, “Moving about the city, I noticed these old-fashioned practices and observed the interactions between people and their ways of making a living, itself an art as old as time.”

Niyati’s exploration led to various representations of what she saw. Through photographs, drawings, video, sculpture and sound, her documentation of these dying professions gives a keen closeness and insight into the lives of the people behind them.2 businesses, 1 human body While the compilation depicts 2 very different professions, they are both closely linked

to the same human body.In Mumbai, stories of livelihoods perennially teetering on the edge of extinction are sometimes poetic, sometimes dark, and always poignant. It is these delicate, everyday (hi)stories that Niyati aims to draw out through this mixed media show.She lives and works in Mumbai

Transportation and Transcendence: Building A Street by Aren Skalman

Aren Skalman in a US Fulbright Research Scholar and artist affiliated with Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath School of Fine Arts. For the past few months he has been building a contemporary art street chariot--constructed from familiar Bangalore materials--as a means of engaging with, and reflecting the streets of the city.

1 Shanthi Road will be hosting an exhibition of the deconstructed chariot sections, along with a selection of transportation-related pieces. Please join us this Saturday, April 13 at 7:00 pm for the reception. The show continues on Sunday 14th April  from 11 am to 7 pm.

 www.askalman.wordpress.com 

"A Life Of My Own" by Chitti Prabhala

Chitti Prabala’s recent work is inspired by the primordial Panchabhoothas—water, fire, wind,
sky and earth—the five elements of our existence, the sacred and scientific source of all life. The
artist evokes their reality through found objects, crafted to suggest a form, wherein metaphor and
material dance in creative play. The forms themselves are sourced everywhere from her own attic
to the local hardware store; they are sometimes crafted from scratch and other times constructed by
sophisticated machine tools.

The effort is an indulgence of the senses; a sense of skill and joy lifted by creative possibilities
without academic or stylistic conventions and inhibitions. Chitti freely exercises a learnt skill to
explore the act of creation. She visualizes the mundane as magical, and turns the ephemeral and
celestial into concrete form. In this subtle and sensitive evocation, she fuses the elemental and
temporal with the material.