The Guild At Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair

The Guild Art Gallery is delighted to present

NAVJOT ALTAF 

VIDYA KAMAT & 

PRAJAKTA POTNIS

At the CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL, International Art Fair 2007, booth number – b305.

Date: November 28^th – December 2^nd, 2007

Information: www.guildindia.com

Navjot Altaf, born in 1949 in the North Indian city of Meerut she is considered one of India's earliest video artists. Navjot’s work orients away from the individualistic, towards collective endeavors. Her work on projects with students and women has always been a part of a wider concern on social and educational issues, through which she has sought alternative art practices and communication outside the gallery space. She has been associated with varied fields, being an Artist, a Researcher, an Anthropologist, a Social Worker and a Political Activist. Since 1999, she has also been engaged with ongoing site-oriented art projects with tribal artists from Bastar, Chattisgarh in Central India. Working across mediums, she has been using video since 1994.

“The current body of work 'B o m b a y  S h o t s' is an interactive project between Navjot Altaf and diverse people living and working in Mumbai city, and its rapidly expanding suburbs. At one level one senses a lack of contact and association with newly developed areas, but at another level one recognizes people's constant interest in communication / dialogue and the richness of heterodoxy in this mega city. Interested in an interactive process of art-making Navjot Altaf and her team over the period met and talked to people in different parts of the city of Bombay. This dialogical process helped understand people's relationship / association with the city at various levels and the sites they relate to most, wish to visit, remember and like to be photographed with   - but can not always do. The idea of 'B o m b a y S h o t s' evolved from this interaction.”  – Navjot Altaf.

Vidya Kamat, born in Bombay, her engagement with the physicality and mortality of human body began while she was working as a museum curator of the anatomy section. Placing her own image as an emblem of a particular representational category, she critiques the social imposition of values on such representations. Footnotes to Innana (I- V) deals with the Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS), taking the texts written by feminist sociologists as a point of departure, Vidya superimposed these texts on her digitally manipulated portraits. Gender as a critical category and feminism as critical theory not only questions the specific modern constructions of the female body-self but also of modernism at large.

“Kamat is neither an ethnic artist stuck in the box of anthropology-as-art, nor is she blasé secularist, a cosmopolitan artist distancing herself from the past and personal; struggles: she does not abolish the sacred to attain the secular, but instead extends herself through symbolic performances that gauge the density and mobility of her individuation. For these works are nothing less than wagers of a difficult process of individuation. I would content that Kamat is working towards personhood that can be achieved only through shifting performance in the course of which she assumes several personae. She is trying slowly to individuate herself, from the crisis of loss of faith in herself, the lack of trust in loved ones, the sense of being orphaned and disinherited from the realm of affection” – Nancy Adjania
 
Prajakta Potnis' work is about interpreting realities through dreams, understanding the real through the perceptions and the aspirations around it. This series of work is associated with the idea of selling dreams. The popular concept of ‘dream house’ is one that is enveloped with the pressure of achievements and success. The commodities that are made out of public emotions intrigue her. The gigantic proud structures are symbolic to the standards, set to judge the capacity or the success of an individual, while the insecurities of being accepted is left for the consuming middle class to deal with. She has tried to stitch these overpowering structures into a uniformed social structure, where the imperceptible barriers that mark territories within communities or classes reflect the invisible/hidden walls or membranes which like protective layers build divisions between the insider and the outsider and raise questions of belonging and being accepted.

“The intimidating architecture spread across large cities dominates the mindset of its inhabitants. It immediately demarcates the various economic strata within the society, giving rise to an Upper Class, a Middle Class and a Lower Class. With the former and latter being such extremes, it is the predominant middle class that suffers the life of sweat and pandemonium to sustain the living conditions. The area that Potnis addresses lies within the four walls of a household wherein life grows / decays. These issues are viewed as "a still life" effect within an interior space where the 'still wall' works as a veil and also as organic separations between the inside and the outside world. The 'wall' also refers to the margins that develop within communities in a city to the bodily margins like the skin or a membrane. She draws an intimate viewpoint to echo the complex psychological characteristics of people living within the four walls of a house or a city.”  – Kanchi Mehta.