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Prajakta Palav’s practice comprises accomplished paintings, as well as empathetic community art interventions. This essay concentrates on the paintings, as well as residues and ephemera emerging from her dialogue with the people of Konkan Nagar, in Bombay’s eastern suburb of Bhandup. While it is plausible to gloss Palav’s practice by reference to Situationist or ‘relational aesthetics’, I would like to think that the more proximate and sustaining affinity lies not with readymade art-historical rubrics, but with impulses in the artist’s local ethos. I am thinking, here, of her spiritual affinity with the literature of the Bhakti saint poets and, especially in the case of this project, with the work of the 20th-century saint and reformer Gadge Maharaj, who travelled across the villages of Maharashtra advocating cleanliness; in Gandhian fashion, he cleaned dirty drains himself, setting an example for his followers. This essay of mine must be read alongside chapter 5, ‘Devolution: The Artist-Citizen Redistributes her Privileges’ (pp. 245-256) in my book, The Thirteenth Place: Positionality as Critique in the Art of Navjot Altaf (Bombay: The Guild Art Gallery, 2016), where I have engaged with this question of the readymade art-historical template versus the organically drafted regional itinerary. In The Thirteenth Place, I question the default use of a generic discourse on collaborative art, and instead, ground the evolving practices of Navjot and her artist colleagues, Rajkumar and Shantibai in Bastar, in region-specific circumstances and choices. *
After a preparatory phase of nationalist modernism, where the assimilation of the past and the question of identities leading to the boundaries of a national subject was the cultural problematic, the decade of the 40s, with the imminent approach of independence, brought to prominence a modernism in closer contact with the West. That it arose in Bombay, on the West coast, neighboring Gujarat with its long maritime history of intimate relations with the people of West Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe, is thus no surprise. The arrival of Indian independence must be seen in the backdrop of larger world events, such as cultural modernism as a response to modernity and social dispersions as a result of World War II. Both may be seen at work in the presence of a number of European émigré Jews in Bombay at that time, particularly the trio, Walter Langhammer, Emanuel Schlesinger and Rudolf von Leyden, who seeded the artistic culture of the city with a taste for European modernism and patronized the development of an Indian modernism related to this. The Progressive Artist's Group, formed just after Independence, is a result of this new current. In keeping with its peripheral and hybrid cultural history, its founding members included the religious and ethnic minorities of India, an Indian Christian from Goa, two Muslims and a Dalit. They represented the expansive soul of India arising in the new nation, its continuing assimilation of "the outside" in a millenia-old process of engagement between monism and pluralism. It should be noted though that this spirit of expansion and adventure did not last long as a local presence in cultural politics, two of its founding members, Souza and Raza, leaving for London and Paris respectively in three years of its starting. It did not fare so well, either, in the majoritarian milieu of the rising nation, with Husain pushed to relinquish his Indian citizenship and ending his days in Doha. But whether in India or outside, the body of works produced by these artists is a testament to the psychic becoming of contemporary India.
In 2012 a new initiative to link arts and communities in India, was created as the Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam Art Project. Planning and conceptual help was requested in Colombia, a country with similar social problems, contradictions and cultural management experience. VK project has performed four venues to 2015 and keeps its continuity in spite of the fact contemporary arts have a small place into the Indian cultural policies which serve more traditional expressions than new local expressions. VK has called international and local artists who liked the idea of the communities linking and had left evidence of how arts and culture can be a tool for the expression of social conditions and the role of social policies. This paper pretends to look up the achievements and challenges without any help from the Indian state and the dynamics of funding in a cross-cultural context.
Shilpa Gupta: Drawing in the Dark. Hatje Cantz., 2021.
WheredoIendandyoubegin: Shilpa Gupta's Art of Encounter, Engagement, and Embodiment2021 •
The aim of this essay is to investigate how the symbiotic framework of art and social practice across disciplines and locations can facilitate an understanding of a transcultural perspective and an engagement with prescient art historical questions. It explores ideas of collaborative and cooperative methods of art making and mutual pedagogy through a case study of the Dialogue Interactive Artists Association (DIAA) in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, India. The essay critically discusses DIAA's successful intervening in the hierarchies that colonialism imposed through the binaries of Art (High) and Craft (Low) practices, and forming terminologies and methodologies of social practice through site-specific engagement and local socio-cultural histories. A 'rhizomatic system' is proposed to reimagine the relationship between art, craft, urban, rural, inclusion, exclusion, and a progressive emplacement of artistic selfhoods across practices and contexts.
Transcending psychological inhibitions caused by colonial encounter in the comprehension of the past is a daunting task in aesthetic discourses, given the fact that colonial paradigms are difficult to erase and contemporary public spaces of art like Museums, as argued by Edward Said are colonial projects. India's perceptions related to the creation, nature, and evaluation of arts has gone a sea change in the colonial period which created a sort of alienation towards the manifestation of indigenous culture among the colonial subjects. Apart from this, the nature of performance, display, patronage venue, audience and space all underwent far reaching transformations in the process. Leela Gandhi demonstrates that in its reflexive modality, post colonialism holds out the possibility of thinking our way through and out of the historical imbalances and cultural imbalances produced by the colonial encounter.1However, in the retrieval of traditional discourses, distortions are bound to happen when using modern terminology , especially as Aesthetics itself happens to be a non indigenous discipline. Despite these severe methodological constraints, the present paper proposes to explore the relationship between the aesthetic theory formulated by thinkers like Abhinavagupta and praxis related to the creation, experience and evaluation of art forms like the performance arts , painting and sculpture in Precolonial India. The paper will focus on the extant and limitations of the inter relatedness with a view to bring to the fore the tensions involved and the insights they could yield in contemporary attempt to make sense of theory and praxis.Apart from the theoretical works, the sources which are being consulted would comprise self reflexive statements of multi faceted artists like Kalidasa who have occasion to deal with art in its various manifestation in the representation of life. It is hoped that such an exercise will be of some use in the comprehension of tradition and for some sort of self reflexivity in contemporary times especially in addressing issues of identity of Indian art. Needless to say, the paper distances itself from any type of exhortations to 'return to the past' as the present writer feels that tradition in its most creative phase is always dynamic and experimental. Tradition is only one of the resources for the creative spirit.. It is indeed a daunting task to locate the conventional precolonial discourse which could be the exact counterpart of modern aesthetics which would discuss problems related to theory and praxis. Natyasastra , the seminal and iconic text of performing arts of India is virtually an encyclopedia of Indian arts in which the center piece is dramatic performance, but which incidentally discusses allied arts like music and dance. In one way, it is the edifice on which the entire aesthetic thought of India is built. Texts like 1 1 Leela Gandhi, Post Colonial Theory, p.176.
India Today - Travel Plus
Art As Communion (India Today - Travel Plus)2003 •
This short article is a brief introduction to the continuity of design heritage in Chhattisgarh in India. A continuity is visible between prehistoric rock art (petroglyphs and pictographs) and tribal art in inaccessible forested and hilly habitats of indigenous, tribal communities.
2015 •
The softness of river line soil has softened our minds, which gave the opportunity for the ancient artists of this most fertile delta of the world, comprised of approximately 700 rivers, to draw coarse lines over muddy surface and to mold any shape by fingers, a hypothetical beginning of art in this land. After Pala consequence, synthesis of Islam and Hinduism in rural culture gave birth of Bengal’s own artistic language during medieval period, where art was something inherent, instinct and intuitive. Folk art was not; even still not iconoclastic but the study of nature is prior to there. Bengal art had been possible only for the thirst to acquire precise negotiation with the surrounding nature. This observation resulted in a metaphysical fancy and was relevant in all forms of art. It represents the emotion of our community, not of the individuals. Thus the artists are lost, in the womb of past but not their arts. Prominence of folk literature had shaped the art of Bengal. From Beng...
Asian studies conference, University of Texas, Austin
Contemporary Indian Art: Away From Art Galleries2019 •
This paper reconsiders public-private partnership as a preferred format of institutional arrangement in creating a credible platform to display contemporary art in India. Public-private partnerships have been successful in India as a mechanism to develop physical infrastructure since it was first introduced in 1996. This paper attempts to deconstruct how a contractual relationship has been successfully appropriated onto the cultural sector, especially to display contemporary art (sometimes modern art) in Mumbai. My paper looks beyond the debate of ‘public good, and private bad,” instead it sheds light on the importance of the private initiatives in creating cultural infrastructure for the city of Mumbai. The private counterparts of the partnerships are identified as the groups of professional citizens, who use their intellectual, social, and economic background to produce these alternative art spaces. The two art space under consideration are unique spaces to display contemporary art, created by restoring and redeveloping buildings to increase contemporary art viewership. I take a closer look at the two heterogeneous art space The Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Mumbai’s oldest ethnographic museum) and Jaya He museum within the new mumbai international airport. These art spaces represent; how contemporary art in India has physically moved out of conventional spaces and is now displayed in unconventional spaces as noted. This movement of contemporary Indian art, has only been possible due to the efforts of professional citizens who individually came together in creating these spaces.
Journal of Islamic Review / İslam Tetkikleri Dergisi
From Learning Circles to Endowed Institutions: Zāwiyas of the Mosque of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀs in the Ayyubid and Mamlūk Cairo2023 •
The journal of quality in education
Le management de la qualité dans les systèmes d'éducation et de formation2019 •
Journal of Philosophical Theological Research
"Nature Along Man's Journey of Return," Journal of Philosophical Theological Research (Volume 25, Issue 1, March 2023), pp. 5-28.2023 •
2024 •
Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin 154
Manisa-Akpınar -Monument einer hethitischen Quellgöttin2022 •
The Philosophical Research Society, INC
Manly P. Hall Reincarnation The Cycle Of Necessity1901 •
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality
Language and Embodied Sexuality2021 •
Deleted Journal
Between anxiety and celebration: resident Korean writers and the Japanese literary canon2000 •
Journal of Communication and Information Systems
Geração de Sinais de RF por Mistura de Harmônicas de Portadoras Ópticas Moduladas em Amplificadores Ópticos Semicondutores2001 •
TURKISH JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY
A case study on in vitro investigations of the potent biological activities of wheat germ and black cumin seed oil2015 •
Russian Journal of Plant Physiology
Seasonal Changes in the Composition and Content of Dehydrins in Winter Wheat Plants2004 •
Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra
Singular equivalence of finite dimensional algebras with radical square zero2016 •
2013 •
Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan Jcpsp
Hemiparesis and Absent MRI Findings in Freidreich's Ataxia2014 •
World Journal of Surgical Oncology
Surgical treatment of liver metastases of gastric cancer: state of the art2012 •