The India-connect at London’s Regent’s Park for Frieze

Between Frieze London, Frieze Masters and Frieze Sculpture, India is seeing the participation of artists and galleries showcasing their works

As the art calendar across the globe is back in full swing, Frieze London is gearing up to return to Regent’s Park, from October 12 to 16. This year, it will also be in august company with the Frieze Masters’s 10th anniversary as they both bring together galleries from 42 countries presenting art across the eras. While Eva Langret, director of Frieze London, is excited about the “ambitious solo presentations and curated shows that really promise to stimulate, delight and challenge,” Nathan Clements-Gillespie, director of Frieze Masters, is looking forward to “Frieze Masters’s signature formula of showcasing the very best art throughout the ages”. Along with top names from across the art world at the venue, India will also see some participation in the form of artists and galleries from the region showcasing their works. Here is what we know:

Indra’s Net curated by Sandhini Poddar

Curated by Sandhini Poddar, adjunct curator at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Indra Net is part of Frieze London’s main section, bringing together 10 presentations and displays. The name is drawn from the Hindu and Buddhist schools of thought and refers to an “ethics of being in which an individual atom holds within it the structure of reality”. The participating artists include Muhanned Cader (Jhaveri Contemporary); Dorothy Cross (Kerlin Gallery & Frith Street Gallery); Shirazeh Houshiary (Lisson Gallery); Jamilah Sabur and Oscar Santillán (Copperfield); Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio & Clarissa Tossin (Commonwealth and Council); Martha Atienza (Silverlens); Teresita Fernandez (Lehmann Maupin); Claudia Andujar (Vermelho); Tomás Díaz Cedeño (Peana); Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Galerie Quynh); Chandraguptha Thenuwara (Saskia Fernando Gallery); Prabhakar Pachpute (Experimenter); Claudia Martínez Garay (Grimm); Goshka Macuga (Kate MacGarry); and Richard Mosse (Jack Shainman Gallery). “Indra’s Net”, according to Poddar, is a “a vast, bejewelled net: at every nexus there is a reflective orb that mirrors and refracts every other orb in its entirety. Every part is held within the whole in a system of dependent origination. All sentient life is interconnected and interdependent; shifts to one atom subtly alter the rest.”

Jhaveri Contemporary

Mumbai-based gallery Jhaveri Contemporary is being represented at Frieze London through the works of Sri Lanka-based artist Muhanned Cader, as part of ‘Indra’s Net’ curated by Sandhini Poddar. Cader’s collages, drawings and paintings are cinematic in nature as he uses “ experimentation, interrogation and poesy” in them. For Frieze London, Cader has drawn inspiration from Leonard Woolf’s book The Village in the Jungle (1913), while his work is situated in Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park, which is grappling with overdevelopment.

Delhi Art Gallery (DAG)

DAG will be presenting the works of Indian artist Madhvi Parekh at the ‘Spotlight’ section of the Frieze Masters, which is curated by Camille Morineau, co-founder and research director of AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions) and the AWARE team. Parekh, a self-taught artist, though categorised as a ‘woman’ artist, has never had her art’s premise being her gender. Instead, the tropes of humanitarianism, environmental inclusion and memory make her a perfect fit for this section of Frieze Masters that features the works of 26 female artists from the 20th century, to draw attention to “previously overlooked names and allow a reconsideration of recent history”

Vadehra Art Gallery

While Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery is all set to showcase a solo exhibit by artist Atul Dodiya, who will be drawing on “the heterogenous, complex world of political and cultural history” at Frieze London, the gallery has a sculpture by NS Harsha at Frieze Sculpture, which opened doors on September 14 at Regent’s Park and will be on display until November 13. “Harsha’s bronze sculpture चाहा क्या, पाया क्या (Desired for, Arrived at) is a ladder constructed not on the basis of linearity or logic but on the crooked, visceral movements of desire, assisting a climber reach their self-appointed ideal destination. For Harsha, the private gaze is a ladder, a gate, and collective intimacy reflects in the charming wonders of nature like the multi-dimensional sky, which encompasses us all,” says the gallery dossier about the artist’s work.

Experimenter

As part of ‘Indra’s Net’ curated by Sandhini Poddar, Experimenter will be showing the work of Prabhakar Pachpute. The Anthills (2020) and Asylum Seeker (2020) will see the artist’s favoured “cut-out shapes and charcoal,” which both reflect on politics and Pachpute’s familiar connections with coal mining in Maharashtra as he employs his signature “surreal cast of characters and creatures, which recur and migrate across his paintings, sculptures and site-specific murals”. Farmer protests and their plight–that often go unnoticed by authorities in India–finds place in Pachpute’s work through motifs such as the bull’s head that Pachpute looks at as the plough, representing “rage and grim determination in the face of displacement, strife and loss”.

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