Where in the World
Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, India
'Where in the World', installation view (2009)
Over the last ten years, favourable tax policies have turned the once largely agricultural city of Gurgaon into one of the most popular outsourcing destinations in South Asia. In addition to the city’s premium real estate, banking and retail centres, Gurgaon is home to India’s first corporate art foundation. In contrast to the predominantly concrete, pollution-blackened urban architecture (typified by Le Corbusier’s weather-beaten Chandigarh Capitol Complex), architect and landscape designer Aniket Bhagwat has created the Devi Art Foundation from materials that pre-empt the threat of decay.
Exterior of the Devi Art Foundation
The titanic cuboid structure is made of sheets of rusted Corten steel resting on two sturdy, rectangular brick bases, while rows of slender windows perforate its facade. When I last visited the foundation, construction work was almost completed. In the vast pit, its sides cut into a giant stairway, very few mechanical diggers could be seen. Instead, men dug with shovels, others moved large sacks while some women carried bricks on top of their heads. Inaugurated last August, the Devi Arts Foundation is the first non-profit space designed to give a platform to young Indian artists as well as providing an arena for the development of the emerging curatorial and critical scene. It is run by one of the oldest business families in India, Anupam and Lehka Poddar, and the space boasts an unrivalled collection of contemporary Indian art.
The current show, ‘Where in the World’, jointly curated by the students and faculty of the School of Art and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, presents the works of 28 artists across four sections. Each considers the way in which the categories ‘Indianness’ and ‘Ethnicity’ have been self-consciously deployed and restaged by artists in their work.
‘Export’ comprises works which display or erase signs of ‘Indianness’ to commercial advantage. Jagannath Panda’s Untitled (2007), a compressed ball of dictionary pages, calls to mind Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Ball of Newspapers (Globe) (1968). The spherical structure alludes to globalization, evoking the universal anglicisation and linguistic bastardization that it has brought about. Barthi Kher’s Hirsute (1999-2000) involves the serial repetition of small, rectangular plates depicting a distinctively male accessory: the moustache. Each square depicts a close-up of a moustache. The re-arrangeable nature of the painted display highlights the conventionality implicit in certain societal idiosyncrasies and points to the internalization of ethnic taxonomization.
Subodh Gupta, Bihari (1999)
A selection of Subodh Gupta’s work includes his Bihari (1999), a self-portrait betraying the touch of a humbler and less cynical artist. Rani (2001), a Warholian fucsia cow, and The Other Thing (2005-6), a spherical sculpture made of stiff kitchen utensils, are reminiscent of Arman’s assemblages. In these works Gupta’s manual input is almost undetectable among the slick, highly polished surfaces. In the section titled ‘Outrageous’, Ashim Purkayastha toys irreverently with the political icon of Gandhi in his Untitled (2006). The Mahatma, a figure whose worship in India is a constitutionally mandated duty, has been cut out from a hundred or so national stamps, thus leaving behind a trail of blasphemic silhouettes.
Gigi Scaria, PAN (i) CITY (2006), video still
In the ‘Outraged’ section, Gigi Scaria’s video PAN (i) CITY (2006) stands out as one of the most revealing pieces of the dilapidated state of the old neighbourhood around Jama Masjid. Situated on prime real estate, the old district attracts investors and developers. From the top of the Masjid tower, Scaria conducts a 360-degree survey of the district, constantly collapsing and digitally rebuilding its precarious buildings. In the evocative documentary Known to Unknown (2006) artist Srinivasa Prasad, transforms himself into a sorcerer. Having collected the ashes of unclaimed bodies from the burning ghats, Prasad has dipped his fingers in the powder and covered the walls of his studio with his fingerprints. The last stage of the ritual involved the whitewashing of the walls: a profane burial alluding to the aestheticization of death of anonymous dispossessed.
Finally, ‘Uncollectable’ groups works which purport to defy commodification and collecting. These include works by Shetty, A. Balasubramaniam and others. One could ask whether all the works displayed neatly fit into the allotted categories or spill over. Art can only enter the market and the collection when acquiring a collectable form, but for a private collection to display work under the rubric ‘uncollectable’ is to court a self-defeating project. Also, given the recurring fetishization of ‘Indianness’ in the exhibition, one could explore the ‘heritage’ and ‘commodification’ issues further benefiting the works and strengthening the critical apparatus sustaining them. This is a thought worth well considering.
Emilia Terracciano
Responses
There are no responses yet for this article.
