Bharti Kher, 'The Hunter And The Prophet', 2004
Digital C-print, 30 x 45, ed. of 10
Devi Art Foundation's inaugural exhibition 'Still Moving Image' is a selection of video and photography by contemporary Indian artists. The exhibition brings to view key artworks and highlights the aesthetic innovations made by visionary artists as they grapple with situating works within the context of society, its advancements and concerns.
Broadly speaking, the blocks of ideas that emerge in the exhibition may be characterized as an exploration of the axial position of the person in all experiences; a strident engagement with socio-political discourses; identity and how it is constructed through historical reading and the post-colonial situation; an examination of the role and meaning of globalization in India today and finally the honest documentation of the present which is also an aspiration of a better future. Still Moving Image mobilizes ideas - those that have reached maturity, those ready to germinate and those yet to be conceived.
Within this frame the large scale exhibition is presented with a non-thematic bias. Accounting for the construction of narratives to be formed in the co-presentation of series of works, the display adheres to an open ended curatorial methodology, which allows avenues for audience interjections and associations.
The exhibition draws upon the centrality of the moving image in India's public domain - the news, a Bollywood film or a cricket match elicits widespread comments and an exchange of opinions. In selecting a medium that is relational, i.e. it attracts the viewer into its space, talks back (as in the case of video with its easy associations with cinema and television) the exhibition builds upon the familiarity and easy banter excited by the flickering screen and the captured moment to emphasize the subjective nature of an artistic and curatorial practice that forefronts the shifting role of audience from passive recipient to active creator of meaning.
If the history of art is the recorded dialogue between artist, medium and society then where do we find ourselves in that conversation at the start of the 21st century? We must wonder, with the world at our fingertips, digitally and freely available and our senses overloaded with reproduced and reworked imagery, which is the path forward in our visual and material exploration? 'Still Moving Image' does not create a forceful response to these questions but displays individual critical enquiries by artists and aligns itself with the spirit of voyage.
The exhibition brings together the works of Aastha Chauhan, Baptist Coelho, Atul Bhalla, Avinash Veeraraghavan, Bharti Kher, Kiran Subbaiah, Mithu Sen, Nalini Malani, Navin Thomas, Pushpamala N., Ram Rahman, Rameshwar Broota, Ranbir Kaleka, Ravi Agarwal, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Sonia Khurana, Sudarshan Shetty, Surekha, Susanta Mandal, Tejal Shah, Tushar Joag, Valay Shende, Varsha Nair and Vivan Sundaram.
Still Moving Image
Until 30 November
Devi Art Foundation
10-11, Sector 44 Behind Apparel House
Gurgaon 122001
Delhi
Tel: +91 11 4166 7373 |
