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Chemould
Prescott
Road
in
collaboration
with
The
Guild,
Mumbai
is
pleased
to
announce
its forthcoming
solo exhibition
How Perfect
Perfection
Can Be
by Navjot
Altaf.
The
show at
Chemould
Prescott
Road showcases
a set of 24
watercolours,
a
medium
Navjot
returns
to after
nearly
two
decades. Her watercolors
are based
on the visual
pleasure
received
from
the scale
and intricate
details
of glass
buildings
and other
monoliths
in
New York
city,
but over
which she
superimposes
line
graphs
of climate
change and
its
impacts.
Some
of
these
graphs
reveal
the damage,
running
into
billions
of dollars,
caused by
extreme
weather
events
that
are
increasing
in
frequency. One of
the
works
has
the
exact degree
of
the
concentration
of Kyoto
greenhouse
gases
from 1850
- 2015,
plotted
over a
steel
support
structure.
Another
has
the
energy-related
carbon
dioxide
emissions
in
the
US and
China
between
1990 and
2012, snaking
over an
innocuous
metal
tipped
gradient.
Navjot’s
watercolours
reveal
our
ironical
desire
for
architectural
splendor
-
the
massive
concrete
jungle
rises
on
the
debris
of our
collective
failure
as preservers
of
the
global
environment.
The
title
of
the
show How
Perfect
Perfection
Can Be
compels
the
viewers
world
over
to
contemplate
their
complicity
in
the
aspirations
for
such structures.
The
exhibition
also
includes a
video
titled
Tana and
parts
of a
loom
installed
as sculptural
pieces.
The video
is
an edited
record
with
the
focus
on perfection
and
installed
parts
of
the
loom
structure,
signify
the perfection
required
in
the
process
of sizing,
warping
(threads
arranged
length
wise),
of
the
threads
and
then
weaving,
for
which
each
thread
has
to
be perfectly
arranged.
The exhibition
can be
viewed
at,
Chemould
Prescott
Road,
Queens
Mansion
3rd
floor,
G Talwatkar
Marg,
Fort,
Mumbai
on
the
dates
mentioned
above.
This exhibition
was
first
shown
in
2015-2016
at The
Guild,
Alibaug,
1028, Ranjanpada,
Next
to Sai
Mandir,
Mandwa Alibaug
Road, Alibaug.
Brief Biography:
Navjot
Altaf
(b)
1949,
Meerut
Navjot moved to Mumbai in 1967 where
she studied both fine and applied arts at the Sir J. J. School
of Art. Since 1972 her paintings, sculptures, installations,
video and site-specific works negotiate various disciplinary
boundaries, reflecting her long-term preoccupation with social
justice, knowledge systems, ecology and indigenous cultures.
Her artistic imagery and conceptual concerns emerge from
innovative syntheses of theoretical and methodological
innovations, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical
and contemporary art, film and cultural theory - grounded in
the context of her long-term participant observation research
and collaborative public art interventions among indigenous
communities in India’s tumultuous region of Bastar. She has also
done site specific ecological art interventions in other
locales, including work focused on innovating municipal
practices for eco-consciousness and managing of urban roadside
trees in New Delhi and elsewhere.
Navjot has held a number of solo
shows including: How Perfect Perfection Can Be, The
Guild, Alibaug (2016); Horn in the Head, Talwar Gallery,
New Delhi, India, (2013); Touch IV, 22 monitors video
installation, Talwar Gallery, New Delhi, and The Guild, Mumbai,
India (2010); A Place in New York, The Guild, Mumbai
and New York (2009/2010); Lacuna in Testimony, Frost Art
Museum, Florida, USA (2009); Touch 1, 2, 3 Remembering Altaf Sakshi
Gallery, Mumbai (2008); Bombay Shots, The Guild,
Mumbai, India (2007); Water Weaving Talwar Gallery, New
York, (2006); Junctions 1,2,3, The Guild, Mumbai,
(2006); Jagar Sakshi Gallery Mumbai, (2006); Mumbai
Meri Jaan and Lacuna in Testimony Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai,
(2005); In Response To Talwar Gallery, New York, ( 2003);
Three Halves and Displaced Self, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai,
(2004).
Some of her recent participations include:
11th Shanghai Biennale (2016);
Making Sense of Crisis - Art as
Schizoanalysis,
KHOJ,
New Delhi, India (2015); Whorled Explorations, Second
Edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India (2014);
Is it what you think?, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi,
India ( 2014); Forms of Activism, Rabindra Bhavan, New
Delhi India, (2014); Rewriting the Landscape: India and
China: Contemporary Art from China and India, MMCA Korea
(2013); Art Walk: Water, Europalia India, Liege, Belgium,
(2013); Women In Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012
Japan (2012/13); Yamuna Elbe-Contemporary Flows,Fluid Times,
Hamburg and Delhi; In Context: Public Art Ecology-Food,
New Delhi; Public Places Private Spaces, Newark Museum
New Jersey; Tiger By the Tail – Contemporary Indian
Women Transforming Culture – The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis
University, U.S.A. (2007); Bombay Maximum City, Lille,
France; Zones of Contact 15th Biennale of
Sydney, Australia (2006); Groundworks Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, U.S.A; Zoom! Art in Contemporary
India at Culturegest, Lisbon; Passage to India,
Geneva (2004); subTerrain: Indian Contemporary Art, House
of World Culture, Berlin; Eigth Havana Biennale, Cuba
(2003); Century City, Tate Modern London (2001) and
First Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan (1999).
The artist
lives
and works
in
Mumbai,
Bastar
and Janjira
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