Breaching Boundaries

With the Covid-19 slowdown firmly in the rearview mirror, India’s art scene is ablaze. The past few months have been abuzz with Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Madras Art Weekend, Serendipity Arts Festival, and Indian Ceramics Triennale to name just a handful. The annual calen­dar reaches its zenith this weekend with the 15th edition of the India Art Fair (at NSIC Exhibition Grounds, Delhi, February 1-4). Reflecting on the journey, IAF’s director Jaya Asokan admits that the brand has grown far beyond what anyone could have imagined. “In the last 15 years, India Art Fair (IAF) has established itself as a leading showcase for Indian art. It has brought together the entire ecosystem, with some innovation and addition every year,” she says. What’s new this time? A total of 109 regional and international exhibitors are participating this year. Most exciting of all, 31 of them are debutants while an all-new ‘collectible design’ segment has been included for the first time. “Though there are various fairs and biennales in the country, each with their own focus areas, as someone passionate about design, I do feel there needs to be a platform that can serve as a custodian for design,” says Asokan, adding, “At India Art Fair, we have always believed that there are no boundaries between creative fields, and artists of all kinds have always been in dialogue to broaden their practices and generate new ideas. We have shown design and designers in previous editions, with an overwhelmingly positive response. The inaugural collecti­ble design section is a manifestation of our commitment to expanding our offering to our collector base and encouraging greater conversation across different creative spheres.”

For artist-designers like Vikram Goyal whose work has always blurred the lines between art, design and craft, the collectible design section will open a floodgate of possibilities. “There is no other nation in the world where such a wide variety of crafts are accessible to all. I am glad that this edition of the India Art Fair will provide a platform for showcasing the confluence of design, craft, and art. I think there is a lot of creativity in this space and some wonderful breakthrough is happening here. In the last decade, collectible design and limited-edition objects have attracted the attention of galler­ies, institutions and collectors, globally. This trend is being mirrored in India now,” explains Delhi-based Goyal, whose studio is showcasing artisanal furniture and objects such as coffee tables, consoles and mirrors.

One of the studio’s highlights is Silken Passage, a gigantic mural meant to be an ode to the historic Silk Road. “It’s a mul­tilayered and culturally rich work,” reveals Goyal, who is in­terested in reimagining historical objects, especially through his decade-long exploration of metals like brass, which are considered auspicious in Indian culture and are often used in rituals and as decorative objects. “Even though my aesthetic is contemporary, it is very much rooted in the visual culture of India,” he says, adding, “For Silken Passage, we have extended the envelope around India to include China and Japan on one side and Iran, Turkey and Italy on the other end of the Silk Road.” He was amazed to discover the ways in which the Silk Road has influenced the cultures of different countries on the Eurasian route. “The Silk Road was not just an exchange of trade but also of raw materials, ideas and thought processes,” he says. It took the collective labour of around 15 craftsmen and over four months to create Silken Passage. Made using the studio’s signature repoussé metalworking technique, the mural brings the flora and fauna of the Silk Road to life, from India’s champa trees to Italy’s pines and Iran’s olive groves. At another booth, architect-cum-designer Rooshad Shroff and artist T Venkanna’s collaboration titled INpLAY features drawings of human bodies superimposed on pieces of artisanal furniture handcrafted from recycled Burma teak wood. A team of specialists from Agra translated Venkan­na’s sketches, evoking “the marble inlay technique that I have been exploring for the past eight years,” says Mumbai-based Shroff.

As far as highly valued fine art goes, the scope and ambit of the fair is equally “ambitious,” says Asokan, whilst conceding that “art remains India Art Fair’s forte.” This year, its offerings include a wide-ranging selection of art—eye-catching South Asian contemporary art, modernist masterpieces, highlights from living traditions or folk art, performance art, immersive digital and much more. The Outdoor Art Projects could be a potential showstopper, feels Asokan. Placed beyond the air-conditioned walls of the fair, these “institutional quality” installations aim to ignite fresh dia­logue in a more relaxed and open-air setting. Around 13 such outdoor pieces are scattered throughout the venue. Jitish Kallat’s Antumbra, a contemplative installation inspired by Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment, sets the tone. Interestingly, this segment also showcases Ladakh’s Transformations—an immersive mountainscape fashioned out of recyclable material. It’s a collaborative venture between Munich-based light artist Philipp Frank and Ladakhi artist Skarma Sonam Tashi, supported by the German Embassy and Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation. Tashi’s practice emphasises the fragility of climate in high-altitude mountainous areas through materials such as paper mâché, cardboard and natural clay. In Transformations, he has used all these materials to raise aware­ness about his native Ladakh and its ecological fragility. In the evening, Philipp Frank’s light projection and Sebastian Barnet Fuchs’ music transforms the installation into a playground of sound and light. “Light is my main medium for this show and I’m interested in how a simple beamof light can transform dif­ferent surfaces and structures and create new meaning within the existing artwork,” says Frank. Raki Nikahetiya, one of the co-founders of sā Ladakh, which had hosted a site-specific land-art exhibition in Leh last year, says that Tashi has worked with discarded cardboard boxes that would have otherwise found their way into a landfill. Transformations examines the lifecycle of such materials, “the processes we use and also our role as artists to contribute to positive change, an approach we at sā Ladakh call ‘environmentally conscious’ art,” explains Nikahetiya.

Themes of sustainability, ethnicity and heritage lie at the heart of Unnati Cultural Village’s (UCV) initiatives in Nepal. UCV and Aakrit Collective’s The Importance of Loss: Migration, Memory and Continuity offers a window into the creative voices of their native Nepal, through the works of young artists like Jagdish Moktan, Hitesh Vaidya, Nawina Sunwar, Pooja Duwal and Tashi Lama. Curated by the Delhi-based Georgina Maddox, the exhibition shines a spotlight on the traditional practices of Nepalese art, crafts and architecture. Maddox is excited because Nepalese artists are showing at the IAF after a gap of 11 years. “What is interesting for me is that all these artists are reinterpreting their own heritage and roots through a more contemporary lens. So, while there will be a reference to the past in their work they are also talking about the current situation of Nepal,” she says. Despite their diverse techniques and working methods, all six artists share a common objective—to break down their artistic legacy and reconstruct it afresh. Consider Hitesh Vaidya, a visual artist belonging to the Newar caste whose work builds upon the traditional Paubha paintings of his community Jagdish Moktan, on the other hand, approaches his father’s life story as a Thangka painter and his activism through family archives and books while Tashi Lama’s work is also inspired by the 7th century Thangka school of painting.

FOR A TASTE OF Western art and global trends, head to the booths set up by well-known international brands like Marc Straus Gallery, Aicon Contemporary, Galleria Continua, Carpenters Workshop Gallery and neugerriemsch­neider. Known for pushing the limits of contemporary art, the programming at these galleries feature an intriguing mix of younger talents and heavy hitters. The Berlin-based neugerriem­schneider, for instance, has brought Ai Weiwei’s Water Lilies (2022) to India. At first glance, Ai Weiwei’s rendition appears to be a loving tribute to Claude Monet’s Impressionist masterpiece of the same name but then, it also possesses a sly subversion that characterises almost all of the controversial Chinese artist’s oeuvre. Weiwei’s conceptual work has been created with Woma toys, a Chinese children’s puzzle like Lego. Note the difference here: while Monet’s abstracted jottings of his Japanese garden stemmed from his deteriorating vision in later years, Weiwei’s version, a century later, is a visual pun. With its re-contextualis­ation of an iconic imagery using an industrial material, Weiwei’s reimagining channels Marcel Duchamp’s readymades just as much as Monet’s blurry dreamscapes.

South Asian art buffs can enjoy rich pickings from 60 local galleries, with representation ranging from established players like Vadehra Art Gallery, Experimenter, Emami Art and Jhaveri Contemporary to newer ones such as Method and Gallerie Splash. Many of them have been showing at IAF since its incep­tion in 2008. Take, Shrine Empire. Like IAF, this Delhi gallery too started its journey 15 years ago. Its co-founder Shefali Somani is full of praise for the fair. “IAF is close to our hearts not just because it was India’s first formal art fair and the first one we participated in after we started Shrine Empire, but also because it has helped to make a huge change in the art ecosystem. It has brought international awareness towards South Asian art and has been instrumental in nurturing a local market while Shrine Empire has worked towards building new markets and collectors for South Asian art and that’s one of the crucial areas where our paths have twinned,” says Somani, whose booth features arresting works by female artists like Anoli Perera, Tayeba Begum Lipi, Shruti Mahajan and Sangita Maity. “I’m very optimistic that the next decade is going to see a huge focus on South Asian artists, and the market can only grow manifold from here,” she says.

(India Art Fair runs from February 1-4 at NSIC Exhibition Grounds, Delhi)

Ai WeiweiArpita Akhandaartart exhibitionsDelhiKarishma SwalMF HusainPooja Duwal