A milieu of themes across mixed media by multiple artists offer varying perspectives to dwell on
As we prepare for the festival-heavy winter season, art galleries have their programming calendars packed with a bunch of Indian artists—both veteran and emerging. While Viraj Khanna and Biraaj Dodiya show their respective solos as they build their bodies of work, iconic artists like Ganesh Haloi, Krishen Khanna and Arpita Singh have their works on display in a mixed format of both solos and ensembles. There’s also a multi-format evocation of one’s past, tied with the politics of land and ancestral connections in Shubham Kumar’s solo. Meanwhile, Navjot Altaf takes her urgent collection of works on issues, including climate change, to the Ishaara Art Foundation in Dubai. Here’s a brief look at what to expect from each exhibition:
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‘In My Fever Dream’ by Viraj Khanna,
For his solo opening at New Delhi’s Bikaner House on December 1, Viraj Khanna draws from the concept of a fevered dream, where senses are often heightened, and dreams are vivid, combining them with what he observes around him and his social interactions. The influence of textiles on his art is evident as he continues to construct, deconstruct, assemble and reassemble in the form of collages-que creations of eclectic figures. “This time, I have used different elements such as thread, beads, pearls and other hand-created materials to structure my figurative work. A multitude of things within serves to express the various experiences that have impacted me,” says Khanna. Phantagorismic figures and fanciful creations with blurred edges lending them a shapeshifting quality define Khanna’s work for this show.
On till: December 11
Where: Bikaner House, New Delhi by @artexposureindia
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‘Re-citing Land | Ganesh Haloi: six decades of painting’
Capturing “in-translatability” in a life rich with experiences such as migration and travel, veteran artist Ganesh Haloi’s works have always depicted nature in a way that one can trace how energy is released, the way light and shadow move and how the wind changes direction. The show, in collaboration with New Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya and The Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, too, tries to capture Haloi’s way of painting what is often transcendental. “What one encounters today while looking at a vast mine of painterly evocations accumulated through 60 years or more is both a discovery and a struggle, a flux, where the surprise of life is depicted as a cryptic weave of sightings and reciting,” says Roobina Karode, curator of the exhibition.
On till: January 11
Where: Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, CSMVS, Mumbai (@jnafmumbai)
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‘Around the Table: Conversations about Milestones, Memories, Mappings’
Presenting a recollection of times and practices of a generation of artists who shaped the landscape of art in post-Independent India, the show, in collaboration with Asia Society India, has works by“citizen-artists”—Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Arpita Singh, Jyoti Bhatt, Himmat Shah and Vivan Sundaram—whose contributions in pioneering movements of both modern and contemporary art remain unparalleled. While some overlapping trajectories or intersections between their practices can be spotted, what stands out is their common trope of having mobilised and formed important groups and movements, marking milestones and protesting injustices as they went around setting up institutions and spearheading important moments in India’s cultural landscape. “The present exhibition is approached as a midnight feast where the seven co-travellers have gathered to rest their bundles of images and stories after their long travel. As dawn slowly bleeds into the fading darkness and wanderers are placed around the tavern’s dinner table, a rich repertoire of ephemera and memories unfold,” says Roobina Karode, chief curator and director, KNMA.
On till: December 4
Where: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket, New Delhi (@knmaindia)
GIREESH GV
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‘Ghare, Khet, Dera’ by Shubham Kumar
In this exhibition, Shubham Kumar examines his “home” in Gaya, Bihar, through its affiliations with caste, land and politics via the three-pronged approach of ghare (house), khet (land) and dera (room). While ghare looks at the permanent anchor of his ancestral home in the village as it grapples and transforms with changes in the land laws, it merges with khet or the ancestral land for cultivation. Dera, meanwhile, represents the shift of the artist’s family to the more cosmopolitan city home in Gaya. Kumar uses his memory of having grown up listening to stories of armed Maoist conflicts over the land, using his camera as a tool to restage some of those stories. “Multiple historic and regional narratives pass through the artist’s rendering of home, farmland and settlement. His meticulous method that utilises watercolours on paper as well as digital manipulations on video, urge the viewers to question the various representational images that surround them, which are, more often than not, seeped in nationalist rhetoric,” said Bhavna Kakar, founder and director of LATITUDE 28.
On till: January 2, 2023
Where: LATITUDE 28, New Delhi (@latitude_28)
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‘Pattern’ by Navjot Altaf
For Navjot Altaf’s first solo exhibition in the Arabian Peninsula, site-specific installations, sculptures, videos, drawings and photo prints help put into context her concerns about climate change, ecology and feminism. For five decades, Altaf’s practice has used art as a medium of activism even as she moved to Bastar from Mumbai to work with themes of exploitation of the environment with indigenous art forms. This particular collection has been in the making since 2015, a year marked by the United Nations Climate Change Conference and the Paris Climate Accords. Six bodies of work come together as the artist presents new and traditional ways such as layered digital prints, photographs of “ancient hieroglyphs are juxtaposed with digital encryptions generated from a corrupt computer hard-drive containing documentation from Navjot’s Bastar diaries” and more.
On till: December 9
Where: Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (@ishaaraartfoundation)
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‘Every Bone a Song’ by Biraaj Dodiya
For Biraaj Dodiya’s second solo at Mumbai’s Experimenter, a series of paintings and sculptures take forward the young artist’s enquiry into matters of form, surface and material, amongst other things. Abstract oil paints are placed alongside wooden sculptures and the “painted surface continues into the sculptures, like repair or sealing with material that forms protective skins, where the planks combined with paintings, stand like signposts and visual beams,” therefore making the connection between the two different mediums more pronounced than the bones or the interlude.
On till: December 23
Where: Experimenter, Colaba, Mumbai (@experimenterkol)
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