Culture, chemistry and commerce converge at Art of India showcase

Indian art has never been as busy as an ant, as it is in the present times,” writes Alka Pande, curator of TOI’s

Art of India

show. With the theme of ‘Tradition, Transition, Modernity’ strung into a Ragamalika, the exhibition attempts to set up a fresh garland to honour India’s civilisational body of artworks. Besides the grand masters whom only the wealthy can seek and afford, there are many younger artists, who will attract new buyers and aspiring collectors. For such new art entrants, there are figurative, pleasant, hangable works.
The thumper, hard-bound catalogue, printed for the occasion presents an optimistic picture of the Indian art scene. India’s urban priorities of roti, kapda, makaan having been addressed to quite an extent, its art market remains at less than half a percent of the $70 billion global market. But India is sure to reduce this gap as the art auction market has galloped 265% since 2013, much like Husain’s horses, which became the hallmark of social arrival of the wannabes in the 1980s! Other estimates demonstrate that 60% of the artworks sold last March “exceeded the upper limits of their estimates, indicating a strong demand.” Besides, a remarkable 600% increase in art sales in less than three decades, shows the bulls huffing and puffing, recalling the powerful black and white works of

Sunil Das

. To keep this buoyancy, a financial suggestion in the catalogue proposes: “For Indian art to reach its potential, it should reach a stage where it is on par with international standards of art, whether that is by diversifying the buyer pool or by seed funding talented artists, so that the ability to create art is also not looked at as a leisurely privilege as is the ability to buy it, or by doing both!” To this, Rakhi Sarkar of Cima art gallery, Kolkata adds in her Epilogue: “Without the imaginative world of art, we will be intellectually constrained and creatively jeopardised”. She suggests an awakening of government agencies, so that “cultural commerce can be made truly big in this country.”

For the it’s scale and location in the lovely India Habitat Centre, this exhibition is to be admired. You could expect squirrel hair paint brushes in most parts of the world, but not gau goli — a dense yellow colour produced from the urine of cows fed on mango leaves. The part of the show called Methods and Materials, literally celebrates India’s diversity, flaunting it at a moment of effervescent global visibility for our civilisation post the Ram Mandir. With contemporary Indian artists beginning to draw from their roots, this capillary action is visually enriching.

The gender, sexuality, and identity section, which forms the gateway gallery, so to say, tells hitherto untold stories, Myna Mukherjee‘s credentials in the politics of representation, come after a battle against the hegemony of clichéd Indian representations abroad. Her queer viewpoint talks loudly against “so many silences about gender and sexuality in South Asian cultures”. The works that hang as well as they speak in today’s space are a pair of collaborative AI works by Karthik Kalyanaraman, Raghava K K and Harish Agrawal which bring stick women drawings of 2,000 people into centrifugal circles with a haloed appeal. A layered two-tier light box cyanotype produced by Mandakini Devi is as contemporary as it is traditional, if one looks below the layer to the curving naga. A work by Bulbul Sharma done on khadi silk, co-worked by a neuro diverse Kanta artist Komia, is as attractive as it is moving in its tale.

The sculpture and photography sections are quite refreshing. Ketan Amin’s work is most effective both for its dexterity of creating two stainless steel sheens: a pleated gloss beside the sheer glare of metal. The most radiant Durga installation in glass fibre creates a magnetism that draws the viewers. The large print of a micro-macro sandstone grille can be admired at length. In the photo section, Asha Thadani’s Makar Sankranti fills our visual vocabulary with a new action shot. But Hariharan Subrahmanian’s new take on John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is as arresting and amusing as it is haunting.
One could cavil about all the sections not being equally substantive. Some artists get four or five exhibits, others are represented with notebook sketches. But to be fair, it is not difficult to be lost in this ocean of Indian art, because it is a mammoth proposition. Nevertheless, in this vibrant painted art route that TOI has created in the capital, there is great urban chemistry between the artworks and the people who pass through it continually. The very bazaar or kasbah atmosphere which the show has created takes it out of the glass cube of the gallery or indeed the ivory tower in which it is usually perceived.
PHOTO1 CAPTION: Photographer Rohit Chawla’s installation of banned books stems from his desire to create art that is subversive and has meaning, rather than just being beautiful, he says. The goal with this exhibit, which features his recreations of book covers including ’The Satanic Verses’ and ‘Black Beauty’, was to obliquely comment on self-censorship and ban culture
PHOTO2 CAPTION: NGO Inside Me has put up paintings made by blind children at the Art of India exhibition. They teach the basics, from holding a crayon to drawing a circle. Some have even learnt to draw complex forms like human or plant anatomy, says founder

Shivani Bharadwaj

, adding that the goal is to introduce people to the unique imagination of these kids