AN ‘Art- Epidemic’ AT THE INDIAN CAPITAL
Delhi Art Week has the city buzzing with artwork that is analytical, critical, and even hopeful in our post COVID times. The Delhi Art Week (DAW) featuring thirty-seven art galleries, two museums, and four art institutions opened on 3 April and will be on till 10 April 2021. The individual galleries kicked off their shows amid much fanfare; even while all the gallerists and artists kept their masks on, the security was ready at the gallery doors with hand-sanitizer and digital thermometers. The viewing public tried to sip their refreshments through tiny openings by pulling their masks on their chins!
For the uninitiated, DAW is a collection of Delhi’s galleries coming together to coincide with the Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW), which opens at Bikaner House on the 8th of April 2021. While it is confusing for most folks to tell the difference between the two, those involved on a structural level know and that is what matters.
Some of the major exhibitions include: ‘Ways of Seeing: Women Artists | Women as Muse’ by DAG; ‘Delhi Shilpi Chakra’ by Dhoomimal Gallery; ‘Still, on the verge:’ Parul Gupta by Nature Morte; ‘Public Sculptures & Installation:’ Paresh Maity, Sanskriti Foundation, in association with Art Alive Gallery; ‘Interiorities of Individual Entities’ curated by Monica Jain presents the works of Tom Vattakuzhy, Puja Mondal, Manish Sharma, Tehmeena Firdos, Nityananda Ojha and Animesh Mahata.
Art Alive Gallery is also showcasing the exhibition Patterns of Intensity, curated by Ranjit Hoskote, as it brings together eleven young artists from various locations across India, each one engaging courageously with the urgencies of our historical present. Anil Thambai, Barkha Gupta, Chandrashekar Koteshwar, Ghana Shyam Latua, Kaushik Saha, Meghna Patpatia, Purvai Rai, Savia Mahajan, Suman Chandra, Teja Gavankar, and Vipul Badva.
Vadehra Art Gallery exhibits a solo Homewardfeaturing stunning new works by artist Arpita Singh at its Modern art gallery and a solo exhibition by Sachin George Sebastian, who brings new drawings and cut-out sculptures cast in metal and paper in his latest body of work titled Once, there was a seed.
A Trifecta of Movement is at Exhibit 320, curated by Adwait Singh, brings together works of three artists occupying similar post-colonial contexts in South Asia: Yasmin Jahan Nupur from Bangladesh, Koralegedara Pushpakumara from Sri Lanka, and Arpita Akhanda from India. The three movements whose arcs the exhibition narratives are: the movement of material (goods and bodies), the movement of (colonial) mischief, and the movement of (public and personal) memory. Each of these movements can be traced, to varying extent and with fluctuating urgency, in the works of all three artists such that it often feels that a thread dropped by one here is seamlessly picked up elsewhere by another.
“We are in the middle of a pandemic which has monumentally changed our way of thinking. Our latest exhibition Traversing the Noosphere calls attention to perspectives on the unprecedented rate of human development of our times, our rapidly evolving relationship with the world around us and our changing sense of self in relation to the natural world,” says Bhavna Kakar director of Latitude 28 and editor of TAKE on Art.
Latitude 28’s segment for DAW presents Traversing The Noosphere, which features Niyeti Chadha Kannal, Gigi Scaria, Noor Ali Chagani from Pakistan, and Diptej Vernekar. We live at a very special time in the history of humanity – a time of developing ecological crisis where our survival as the human race is threatened by the progression of climate change and depletion of natural resources. The Noosphere, as Vernadksy considered it, envelops the world as a sphere of thought that has emerged as a consequence of the increasing complexity of human consciousness, a natural culmination of biological phenomena.
Hopefully, we can step forward in the realm of contemporary art while keeping in compliance with the pandemic guidelines.
Text by Georgina Maddox
Image Courtesy: Delhi Art Week
Find more about the Event, Artists and Galleries:
https://blueprint-gallery.com/