Prophets, Visionaries and Disciples

Prophets, Visionaries and Disciples: Srishti Faculty and Students

May 3 - 15, 2024.

This exhibition features a select group of Srishti students and faculty whose work represents an ongoing confluence of artistic research and practice.

Whether prophets, visionaries or disciples, we are offered a profound insight into their recent conceptual and formal investigations:

They are our advance guard in confronting that our world is bent out of shape,

They are our barometers of the gravity of the current human condition,

They discover and describe the hidden elements of destruction and chaos that lies before us,

They are prophets of the past and visionaries of the future.

These artists are all disciples of the artistic practices that have been practiced for centuries. Driven by the challenge of how to convey the world in its beauty and ugliness, and as proactive witnesses of our unfolding history, these artists continue the legacy of masters both celebrated and "anonymous." They share their journeys into profound self-knowledge, where visions of our future are distilled.

Notable works include: Shai Heredia's most recent book, One Film at a Time, 2024, an anthology that traces diverse histories and trajectories of filmmaking in India since the 1960s; Mamatha Sagar's Song Slauther installation in the memory of Saketh, who was brutally felled by the police in 2005 and Anil Kumar's drawings titled Those who Preach, Reach Each to whom it does Ache!

Participating artists:

Anan Wadhwana, Anil Kumar; Ananya Vepa, Arya Patil, Bavisha, Charvee Thakur, Devaki Pratap, Mamatha Sagar, Ramona Dias; Spriha Das, Shambhavi; Shai Heredia, Vaibhavi, Vani Parmar, Yajnaseni, and Yashas Shetty.

 

Half Past Sense by Roy Varghese

Half Past Sense’ by Roy Varghese

Opening on 27 April 2024

5 pm onwards

8 pm Live-set by Yashas+Hollis

28-30 April 2024

11 am - 5 pm

Apart from being drawn to absurdity as a way of being, Roy Varghese runs roy+arati design in Bangalore along with his partner. After graduating from the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology in 2002, he worked as an independent designer and illustrator, developing communication design for cultural producers and institutions in the city. These include several poster commissions for the theatre company Black Coffee. Before founding the design practice with his partner in 2007, he worked for a few years in Colombo as a Creative Director in advertising. In recent years, he’s been dedicating more time to his art practice, producing works on paper, books and murals. ‘Half Past Sense’ is his first solo exhibition

 

The weapon is poetic

 

"A Pan African Mission" Film Screening By Mats Hjelm

 About the Film

Filmed over three years in a bankrupt Detroit and a war-torn Liberia struggling to reinvent itself, Swedish director Mats Hjelm (Black Nation, 2008) follows the trajectory of African-American entrepreneur Anthony Kojo Darden's plans to help rebuild a new Liberia. Kojo first visits Liberia with the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, aka the Shrine of the Black Madonna from Detroit, to help with their missionary work. In Monrovia, he meets Preston Papa Jackson, a former Liberian street kid turned into an ambitious social worker willing to fulfill Kojo's plans if only Kojo would let him.
Produced by Herrlander Pictures, Kojo's personal journey to Africa is interspersed with the history of Black America, the Civil Rights movement, and the history of Liberia as a symbol of Black freedom. While being the site of one of the bloodiest civil wars in recent history, Liberia is now heavily dependent on foreign aid to get back on its feet. Will Kojo be able to make a difference there? Will Preston get the help he needs?

"Faith & Patience" Solo show by Kapila Nahender

In current times, where religion is doubted and questioned, Kapila is an artist who believes and invests in personal faith in a secular and cosmopolitan context. Her works are an evolution from her earlier practice of spontaneous drawing and application of colour to her layered canvases that are often loaded with signs, symbols, and calligraphy, subjectively involved in memory and loss, conflict and change, and the eternal hope from seeking and investing in acts of constant repetition of the sacred word, a mantra like a riyaaz. 

The new set of works is layered like a palimpsest of flower petals, talismans, sacred wrappings of fabric that contain the energy of sculpture, and icons of faith. Traditionally, icons are wrapped and arranged. This imagery comes from her everyday reality of investing in faith, rituals, and the act of visarjan - ritual immersion of icons that dissolve and resurrect in a cycle of the festival seasons. The quest to search for the spiritual in the material is eternal, and the artist invests in the material as a metaphor for hope that nurtures herself through her practice.