AMITABH KUMAR
1984

Placebo is an ongoing project under the Talab series.

Talab, through various materials and propaganda’s, is tracing a history of human desire and speculating about its future. 

Placebo, in specific, is looking into the idea of Religion which has its roots in the word Re+Ligos. ‘Ligo‘ means to fasten and ‘Re’ means to do it again. Religos means that which is fastened tightly. Hence the word, religion. 

What is that which fastens us so tightly? To what are we fastened? If we were to update our database and re-filter the lens, what figures and agendas would it unfurl?

Amitabh Kumar is a designer/artist from New Delhi, graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda and has worked as a part of the Sarai Media Lab (2006 -2010) where he researched and made comics, programmed events, designed books and co-curated an experimental art space. He is visiting faculty to the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and is an initiating member of the Delhi based comics ensemble, The Pao Collective. In 2011 he curated City as Studio along with Magda Kardasz at Zacheta National Art Gallery, Poland. In 2012 he was a part of a residency and exhibition On the Sidereal curated by Prayas Abhinav at The Guild.

BAIJU PARTHAN

PROCESS-C (Coelacanth-Latimeria print)
PROCESS-D (Dragonfly – Orthetrum Sabina))

'Process- prints'
“These works represent an emerging taxonomy of simulated entities existing solely in the virtual world. 
The prints are generated using arrays of 3D geometry arranged to simulate organisms from the real natural world.  Lenticular printing technology and virtual perspective is utilized to further accentuate the virtual existence of these entities.
The conceptual backbone of these works is Linnaean Taxonomy- which is a method of classifying living things, originally devised by Carolus Linnaeus.  The most important aspect of this system is the general use of binomial nomenclature, the combination of a genus name and a single specific epithet to uniquely identify each species of an organism.” – Baiju Parthan

Baiju Parthan has an eclectic academic background. Along with degrees in Painting, Botany, Philosophy, and a Post-grad diploma in Comparative mythology, he has done studies in computer game level design at the Pratt Institute Manhattan, USA. Some of his selected group shows include ‘India’, curated by Pieter Tjabbes and Tereza de Arruda, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro and , Brazil and SESC Belenzinho Sao Paulo, Brazil; 'Constructed Realities', curated by Gayatri Sinha at The Guild, Mumbai, 2010; 'Go See India', part of India-Sweden Cultural Exchange Program; presented by Emami Chisel, Kolkata at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkatta, Vasa Konsthal and Gallery-Scandinavia,Gothenburg; 'The Intuitive: Logic Revisted', from the Osians Collection at The World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; 'Looking Glass: The Existence of Difference', Twenty Indian Contemporary Artists presented by Religare Arts Initiative, New Delhi in collaboration with American Centre, British Council, Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; 'The 11th Hour: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art from India / Diaspora', Tang Contemporary, Beijing. Parthan’s recent new media installations include Arpeggio for Abbe Faria,- Photography Installation, Benedictine Museum, Fecamp, France; ‘Liquid memory’ new media Installation- Galerie Christian Hosp, Nassereith, Austria.His recent solo shows are 'Dislocation: Milljunction Part 2', Aicon Gallery, London; 'Milljunction: Paintings and Photo-Works by Baiju Parthan', Aicon Gallery, New York; Liquid memory + Rant - Inter-media show Vadehra Gallery New Delhi.

BALAJI PONNA
1980 

We make lot of action painting daily
We are the people...we are the nation...without notion
We are the people...we are the nation...without ration

“Balaji’s works comprise a crucial relation between the painted text-phrases and the images. In fact this text, composed in two phrases, frames the meanings and the subtext of the visual images. Written in a simple typography, this text does not intervene in the picture format but stays on the surface, by virtue of its flat, two-dimensional nature. In one sense this text is equal to the status of parergon, as theorised by Derrida – Parergon is “neither work (ergon) nor outside the work, neither inside or outside, neither above nor below, it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work” (Truth in Painting, 1978). The textual phrase belongs to the work (painting) as well as stays unrelated pictorially to the painting. When a viewer approaches these paintings, the sight is drawn towards deftly manoeuvred images, but quickly, the verbal text catches the eye, as if intervening between the pictorial image and the sight of the onlooker. This moment of rupture is also the moment of introduction of specific meanings to the work. The phenomenological and aesthetic experience of the viewer, in this context, is guided by the text-phrase, written in English. And in this moment of quick shifts between the textual phrase and the image, signification gets complicated and acquires a double signification which correlates each other – the text and the image. At one level the text-phrase puts forward a literal or direct meaning of it. When the signified or the meaning interacts with the image, this signified becomes empty and acquires a second level signification, whose signified belongs to the social and political realms.”   (Excerpt from an essay by Santosh Kumar Sakhinala)

Born in 1980, Balaji Ponna received his B.F.A in Graphics from Andhra University with Gold medal and M.F.A in Graphics from Visva - Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has been recipient of H.R.D. National Scholarship for young Artists (2004–05). His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Looking is not Seeing’. The Guild, Mumbai; ‘Monuments’ at India Art Summit 2011 with The Guild, Mumbai; ‘The Things I Say’, at Studio La Citta, Verona and ‘Black Smoke’, at Bose Pacia, Kolkata, in collaboration with The Guild. Ponna has participated in various group shows over the last couple of years including ‘Art Celebrates 2010: Sports and the City, an Exhibition of Indian Contemporary Art’ curated by  Rupika Chawla; ‘Contemporary Exoticism’ curated by Marco Meneguzzo at Studio La Citta, Verona; Art Basel by Studio la Citta, 2009;  ‘A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art’, Saffronart, New York and The Guild, New York; ‘The July Show’ at The Guild and ‘Are We Like This Only?’ Curated by Vidya Shivadas  at Vadehra Art Gallery , Delhi . His works were also exhibited at the France Print Biennial in 2009. 

CHARWEI TSAI
1980 

Gone Beyond V
Gone Beyond VI
Gone Beyond VII

“Gone Beyond (2011) is continuation of a series of black and white photographs where I write the mantra from the end of the Heart Sutra onto light diffusions captured by a camera with a broken lens. In religious ceremonies, the mantra is recited orally or presented visually in mandalas as an aid to move forward, to be freed from attachments. The accidental beauty created by a broken machine relieves a need to control perceptions.” – Charwei Tsai.

Charwei Tsai was born in Taiwan and presently lives and works in Taipei and Paris. Tsai graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design and Art & Architectural History (2002) and completed the postgraduate research program at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2010). She has had solo exhibitions in Taipei, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bogotá and Mumbai with The Guild in 2010 and her projects have been included in various international exhibitions, including the ‘J'en Rêve’ at Fondation Cartier, Paris, France (2005), inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006), ‘Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves’ at the ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2007), ‘Traces du Sacré’ at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008), the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial (2009), and Taiwan Calling at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2010), Yokohama Triennale and the Ruhrtriennale (both in 2011), a solo presentation at Art Hong Kong (2012), ‘Phantoms of Asia’ at Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2012), ‘Boundaries on the Move’ at Herzliya Museum, Israel (2012) and ‘Eattopia - Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition’ at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2012). In 2013 Charwei Tsai will be participating in Sharjah Biennial 11, curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Tsai’s works are in the collection of Mori Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery. In addition to her art practice, Tsai is publishing an artists’ journal Lovely Daze twice annually since 2005.

G. R. IRANNA
1970

Untitled

“Whether using his trademark "splotched surfaces" to offer an entry point beyond the spatio-temporal manifestation of images on the canvas, or his characteristically absent backgrounds, or his palimpsest layering of trace outlines, such as tree roots and branches or schematized cityscapes,and human figures, Iranna's visual language turns on the creation of what philosopher Michel Foucault called "heterotopias"—the "intersections between real and virtual spaces" that function as interstitial vectors allowing us to see ourselves in the "unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface." Iconically resembling a mirror, bridge, or boat, a heterotopic space "is a floating piece of space, a place without a place" that is contained within itself. Subsisting on the margins of society in a self-contained, ritualistic space constituted by shared notions of birth, death, life and transcendence, the Buddhist monk is a self-peripheralized being— a quintessential heterotopic subject.” —Maya Kóvskaya, PhD

Iranna obtained M.F.A. from Delhi College of Art. He has had several solo shows like ‘limnig Heterotopias’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2012; ‘Scaffolding the Absent’, The Guild, Mumbai, 2011;  ‘Ribbed Routes’, The Guild, Mumbai, 2010 and ‘Birth of Blindness’, The Stainless Gallery, New Delhi and Aicon Gallery, London and New York in 2008. Iranna is a recipient of National Academy award in 1997 and the M.F.Husain and Ram Kumar award. G.R Iranna has been nominated from India for the ABPF Signature Art Prize 08, Singapore Museum. He has widely participated in many significant group exhibitions and workshops in India and abroad, including ‘Roots in the Air, Branches Below: Modern & Contemporary Art from India’, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose (2011); ‘Time Unfolded’, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2011); 'Finding India: Art for the New century', Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, by Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (2010); ‘Go See India’, curated by Amit Mukhopadhyay and Oscar Aschan, Gothenburg, Sweden (2010); ‘Cultura Popular India and Beyond’, curated by Shaheen Merali,  Alcalá 31, Madrid (2009) and Arad Biennale, Romania (2005) among others.
 

PRAJAKTA POTNIS

1980

3.37 am

“Between the intimate world of an individual and the world outside which is separated sometimes only by a wall there are imperceptible elements that may transgress and affect the psyche of individuals. My attempt is to address social and individual anxieties through the degeneration that happens within the everyday. From decaying vegetables in a refrigerator, which may be genetically modified to cancerous growth on everyday objects, I have realised that the passage of time has somehow always found a way into my work. Objects and spaces, that have a time told testimony to give, often disclose an out of control situation, an outburst that is often result of apathy or neglect, interestingly woven within the fabric of time.” – Prajakta Potnis. 

Potnis received her BFA and MFA from the Sir J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai, India (1995/2002). Her multidisciplinary work spans painting, installation, sculpture and photography and investigates the porousness and interpenetrability of boundaries and binaries such as inside/outside, public/private, natural/engineered, etc, and has been shown to critical acclaim in India and internationally in venues including Ullens Center for Contemporary Arts, China (2012); Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithunia (2011); Zachęta National Gallery Of Art, Warsaw (2011);  MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome (2011); Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Paris, France (2011), Heart Herning Museum Of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2010), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2009); The Essl Museum of Contemporary Art, Austria (2010);  Khoj International Artist Workshop, Delhi (2009); The ‘Kala Ghoda Festival,’ Mumbai (2007); Grosvenor Vadehra, London (2007); Khoj International Artist Workshop, Mumbai (2005); National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (2002), and others, as well as solo exhibitions, ‘time lapse’, The Guild, Mumbai (2012); ‘Local Time’, Experimenter, Kolkatta (2012); solo at India Art Fair, New Delhi (2012); ‘Membranes and Margins’, Em Gallery, Seoul (2008); ‘Porous walls’ The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai (2008); ‘Walls- In- Between’, Kitab Mahal, The Guild, Mumbai (2006). Her work has been featured in significant publications including ‘The Khoj Book of Indian Contemporary Art: 1997-2007’, Ed. Pooja Sood (HarperCollins India Original, 2010); ‘I’m Not There: New Art from Asia,’ Ed. Cecilia Alemani (The Gwangju Biennale Foundation, 2010); ‘Younger than Jesus: The Artist Directory’ (New Museum and Phaidon, 2009), as well as numerous catalogues and art magazines such as Art ETC, and others. Potnis is also the recipient of the major awards including the Sanskriti Award for ART (2010), the Inlaks Fine Arts award (2003-2004), and the Young Artist fellowship, from the Indian National Department of Culture (2001- 2003). 

RAKHI PESWANI

Body Fictions (Routing Violence)

“Matters Under the Skin is an ongoing project that investigates the lived experiences of a subject that is involved with the processes of creation. By amalgamating various vocabularies- visual, verbal, material and spatial; the work takes shape as a nuanced and layered communication of a language that reveals the 'hidden' dimensions of the human body. Body, in this sense, is seen from within, as against its representational mode of being seen and shown from the outside.

The body, here, is perceived as a site of infinite manipulations; both, from within its own machinery and from the outside. It is distinguished as a site of effects that constantly build the physiological and psychological internals...

The discovery, understanding and articulation of these effects are shaped through the practices of manual crafts. In this sense, the process/craft takes a literal centrality through which the causes and effects of the body are brought to existence. The inherent contradictions and conflicts of an individual are untangled in a Gandhian manner, through manual processes. 

These manual processes are a consequence of direct manifestations of bodily gestures. Sometimes these bodily gestures are also seen as the first step to understand the technique of the craft itself; of graphic drawing, hand embroidery, sewing etc. 

In this sense, this layering is seen as a practice that perpetuates the literary or creative capacities of the body. Almost in a Foucauldian vein, work, or the creation of 'fiction', is seen as a possibility of “not showing the invisible, but in showing the extent to which the invisibility of the visible is invisible”. – Rakhi Peswani. 

Peswani received the Inlaks Scholarship for the UNIDEE in residence at Cittadellarte, Fondazione Pistoletto in 2006; Artists’ residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Sanskrithi Pratishthan, New Delhi in 2007 and PEERS-2003’ residency invitation from KHOJ, New Delhi.  Rakhi was invited for a residency in The Hague, where she showed Bodies / Subterrain (Eurydice & Sita), at Vrije Academie in 2011. Her recent solo exhibitions include ‘Anatomy of Silence’, The  Guild, Mumbai (2013); ‘Matters Under the Skin’, Art HK – Asia One, Hong Kong, presented by The Guild, Mumbai (2011); Intertwinings, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2009) and Sonnet for Silent Machines, at Jehangir Nicholson Gallery and  The Guild, Mumbai (2007). Rakhi has participated in several select exhibitions including Art Stage Singapore 2011, I think therefore graffiti…, presented by The Guild, Mumbai; Reverie, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art, Saffronart, New York; The Ego, The Persona, The Shadow and The Wise Old Man (or was it The Great Mother?) by The Guild, New York; Analytical Engine, Bose Pacia, Kolkata and Gallery Seven Art Ltd, New Delhi. Peswani’s participation in Museum shows include – ‘Zones of Contact propositions for the Museum’, co-curated by Vidya Sivadas, Akansha Rastogi, Deeksha Nath, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida; ‘Bring Me A Lion: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art’, The Hunt Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri; ‘Potters in Peril’, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; ‘Generation in Transition. New Art from India’ at Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland and Contemporary Art Centre, Lithuania.

Peswani  had been teaching Visual arts at the Sarojini Naidu School of Fine arts and Communication Hyderabad Central University  since last eight year. She recently joined as a faculty at Srishti School of Art  Design Technology in Bangalore.

RAVI AGARWAL 

Ravi Agarwal is a photographer artist, writer, curator and environmental activist. He explores issues of urban space, ecology, capital in an interrelated ways working with photographs, video, performance, on-site installations and public art. Agarwal has participated in several international shows including Documenta XI (Kassel 2002),‘Zones of Contact propositions for the Museum’, co-curated by Vidya Sivadas, Akansha Rastogi, Deeksha Nath, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, 2013; ‘The Needle on the Gauge: The Testimonial Image in the works of Seven Indian Artists’, curated by Ranjit Hoskote, Contemporary Art Centre of SA, Adilaide, Australia, 2012; ‘Newtopia’, curated Katherina Gregos, various Museum venues, Mechelen, Belgium, 2012; ‘Critical Mass, Contemporary Art from India’, curated by  Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel, 2012; ‘Z.N.E, Examples to Follow’, curated Adrienne Goehler, traveling exhibition, Berlin, Mumbai, Adis Ababba, Beijing; ‘Horn Please,’ Kunstmuseum, Bern, 2007; ‘Indian Highway’ (2009 ongoing); ‘Generation in Transition,’ National Gallery of Art, Warsaw & Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithunia; ‘The Eye is a Lonely Hunter, Images of Humankind,’ at Fotofestival Mannheim_ludwigshafen_Heidelberg; ‘After the Crash’ at Museo Orto Botanico, Rome; his recent solo show being ‘Of Value and Labour’, The Guild, Mumbai; ‘Flux: dystopia, utopia, heterotopia,’ Gallery Espace, New Delhi. In 2013 he will be participating in Sharjah Biennial 11, curated by Yuko Hasegava. Agarwal recently co-curated a twin city public art project, Yamuna-Elbe.Public.Art.Outreach. He writes extensively on ecological issues, and is also founder of the leading Indian environmental NGO, Toxics Link. He is an engineer by training.

SATHYANAND MOHAN
1975 

Déjà VU
Oracle (Anamorphic Stain)
Drive(Bachelor Machine) 

“The works called Oracle try to suggest that both language and meaning are primarily ways of coming to terms with a universe that is marked by brute contingency, and of imposing some kind of provisional order on randomness and entropy. The photographs deal with the two realms of human existence, sex (Eros) and death (Thanatos), that cannot be known or posessed. All cultures have oracles; the faithful go to them in order to know what the Fates have in store for them. But the double-bind of such knowledge consists in the fact that you are powerless to change what is in store for you, since fate has to run its own ineluctable course, thereby making such knowledge superfluous in the first place. But it would appear that human beings would rather have some meaning than none at all, even if it be a knowledge of certain destruction or death. Thus divination, - which is essentially a form of reading, of finding stable significations in chance occurrences, -, and by analogy, the search for any meaning whatsoever, is ultimately grounded in the hope of certainty (even if it means the certainty of that which one cannot change) in the face of a hostile universe.

Many photographs also try to address the relationship between language and its other side, - the domain of that which is considered unrepresentable, the limits of language and sense. Some things are famously considered unrepresentable, - the Holocaust, for example, - since the material means are held to be inadequate to the singularity of the object or event to be represented. But there are other things that represent the absolute limit of language, or the unthinkable, - death, for instance.  Some photographs play with paradox to indicate the limits of what can be said in the manner of Zen koans (Satori, Tabula Rasa and Deja Vu), while at the same time trying to gesture towards the esentially aporetical nature of experience itself. “ – Sathyanand Mohan.

Born in Kerala, Sathyanand received his BFA in Painting from The Government College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, 1994-1998. MFA in Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University Baroda, 1998-2000. He has been a part of Singapore Art Fair 2011, Dubai Art Fair 2011, India Art Summit 2011, KIAF 09, India Art Summit 09, 'Armory Show' 09, New York and  'ART HK 09', Hongkong  represented by The Guild, Mumbai. His solo shows include ‘Mirage’ in 2012 and ‘Reliquary’, in 2009 held at The Guild, Mumbai. Some of his group exhibitions include ‘The Secret life of plants’, curated by Maya Kovskaya, Exhibit 320, New Delhi; ‘Alternate to Another’, The Guild Art USA Inc., New York; ‘A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art’, Saffronart, New York; The Guild, New York; ‘Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on the Self-Portrait’, The Guild, Mumbai.

SHADI GHADIRIAN
1974

Nil Nil # 3
Nil Nil # 17

In Nil, Nil series, objects of military use – knife, helmet, canteen, ammunition belt, grenade etc. penetrate the domestic space: the menace of conflict grafted onto peaceful everyday life, while in a way also becoming contained by the tranquility of the familial location.

Qajar Series 16 

“As an image, a photograph stands on its own. Rarely can such images be taken at face value. This is particulary true of studio portraits where the photographer has chosen to construct an image. Why construct such an image? The photographer has left clues. The photographs here are the works of Shadi Ghadirian. Chosen from among her peers, the models pose with modern props in Iranian dress and against backgrounds from a century earlier. The images appear to depict a conscious choice on the part of the women. Though a photograph should speak for itself, one cannot be oblivious to the fact that what we see are constructed images of her own gender, at a particular moment in history, created by a young Iranian woman.  As opposed to the work of a few women photographers from the Middle East, living and exhibiting in the West, that explores the notion of the 'western image of eastern woman' and their personal alienation, Ghadirian's photographs are unique. They are images from within that do not play on western sensitivities but stand on their own.” - Dr. Reza Sheikh

Shadi Ghadirian studied photography at Azad University (in Tehran). She works at the Museum of Photography in Tehran. Ghadirian has exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe, and the U.S.A. including solo shows at the The International Photo Festival, Kusadasi, Turkey; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Photography Festival of Istanbul, Turkey; Gallery B21, Dubai; Al Maamal Foundation, East Jerusalem, Palestine; Villa Moda, Kuwait; Silk Road Gallery, Tehran; Golestan Gallery, Tehran. Her works are in both private and public collections such as the MUMOK in Vienna, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The British Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum in London; The Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Saatchi and Saatchi, London and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Shadi Ghadirian was a part of the publication titled Emerging Asian Artists, which was launched along with the exhibition of the same title at Art Gwangju 2010.

T. V. SANTHOSH
1968
 

“One looks at the world through tinted spectacles of news reports, that unroll the stories of massacre of innocents, spectacular highlights of explosions, flux of faces of people who make headlines, spitting the words of hate and arrogance and the kinds of propaganda campaigns that just struggle to hide nothing but truth. It is a strange world exposed and manipulated. A world where, one does not know who the real enemy is, yet ‘terror’ is the common word for both those who resist and those who attack.

 It is one’s extended vision that construct and reshapes the perceptions of the ‘present’. And it is riddled with a number of eternal questions and a couple of ready-made yet elusive solutions, which I am interested with. It is the touch and smell of the ‘present’ I am dealing with in my works, in a process to find a solution, where the praxis of language becomes one with the perceptions of reality.” T. V. Santhosh

“T.V. Santhosh’s associations are humanist and metaphysically oriented without being detached from reality. They act as conceptualist devices intended to break down the simple binaries through which we perceive our complex and multi-layered milieu. Through this lens he examines the distortion of science and technology into vehicles of terror. T.V. Santhosh’s work deals with the overarching presence of the notion of violence in contemporary societal life. His works talk of socio-political and environmental dilemmas in a global context.”
– Santhosh S.   

Born in Kerala, T.V. Santhosh obtained his graduate degree in painting from Santiniketan and Masters degree in Sculpture from M. S. University, Vadodara. Santhosh’s works have been shown widely in Museums and Biennales. Some of the museum shows include: WAR ZONE – Indian Contemporary Art, ARTEMONS CONTEMPORARY,  Das Kunstmuseum, Austria;  Critical Mass: Contemporary Art from India, curated by Tami Katz-Freiman and  Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel,2012; 11^th Havanna Biennial, 2012; INDIA- LADO A LADO, curated by Tereza de Arruda, SESC  Belenzinho Sao Paulo, Brazil 2012; India, curated by Pieter Tjabbes and Tereza de Arruda, Centro Cultural Banco do  Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2011; 4^th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rewriting Worlds, curated by Peter Weibel, 2011; In Transition New Art from India, Surrey Museum of Art, Canada, 2011; Collectors’ Stage: Asian Contemporary Art from Private Collections, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 2011; Crossroads: India Escalate, Prague Biennale 5, 2011; Empire Strikes Back, The Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010; The Silk Road, New Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern Art from The Saatchi Gallery at Tri Postal, Lille, France, 2010; Vancouver Biennale curated by Barry Mowatt, 2010; Dark Materials curated by David Thorp, G S K Contemporary show, at Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009; India Xianzai, MOCA, Shanghai, China, 2009; Passage to India, Part II: New Indian Art from the Frank Cohen Collection, at Initial Access, Wolverhampton, UK, 2009; Aftershock, Conflict, Violence and Resolution in Contemporary Art,  Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA Norwich, 2007; Continuity and Transformation, Museum show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy, 2007. His solo shows include The Land, Nature Morte, Berlin in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2011; Burning Flags, Aicon Gallery, London in collaboration with The Guild, 2010; Blood and Spit, Jackshainman Gallery in collaboration with The Guild, 2009; Living with a Wound, Grosvenor Vadehra, London in collaboration with The Guild, 2009; A Room to Pray at Avanthay Contemporary, Zurich, in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2008; Countdown, Nature Morte, Delhi in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2008 and many more.

Solo Project:   Booth S – 11  
T. V. SANTHOSH 

Born in Kerala, T.V. Santhosh obtained his graduate degree in painting from Santiniketan and Masters degree in Sculpture from M. S. University, Vadodara. Santhosh’s works have been shown widely in Museums and Biennales. Some of the museum shows include: WAR ZONE – Indian Contemporary Art, ARTEMONS CONTEMPORARY,  Das Kunstmuseum, Austria;  Critical Mass: Contemporary Art from India, curated by Tami Katz-Freiman and  Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel,2012; 11^th Havanna Biennial, 2012; INDIA- LADO A LADO, curated by Tereza de Arruda, SESC  Belenzinho Sao Paulo, Brazil 2012; India, curated by Pieter Tjabbes and Tereza de Arruda, Centro Cultural Banco do  Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2011; 4^th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rewriting Worlds, curated by Peter Weibel, 2011; In Transition New Art from India, Surrey Museum of Art, Canada, 2011; Collectors’ Stage: Asian Contemporary Art from Private Collections, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 2011; Crossroads: India Escalate, Prague Biennale 5, 2011; Empire Strikes Back, The Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010; The Silk Road, New Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern Art from The Saatchi Gallery at Tri Postal, Lille, France, 2010; Vancouver Biennale curated by Barry Mowatt, 2010; Dark Materials curated by David Thorp, G S K Contemporary show, at Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009; India Xianzai, MOCA, Shanghai, China, 2009; Passage to India, Part II: New Indian Art from the Frank Cohen Collection, at Initial Access, Wolverhampton, UK, 2009; Aftershock, Conflict, Violence and Resolution in Contemporary Art,  Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA Norwich, 2007; Continuity and Transformation, Museum show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy, 2007. His solo shows include The Land, Nature Morte, Berlin in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2011; Burning Flags, Aicon Gallery, London in collaboration with The Guild, 2010; Blood and Spit, Jackshainman Gallery in collaboration with The Guild, 2009; Living with a Wound, Grosvenor Vadehra, London in collaboration with The Guild, 2009; A Room to Pray at Avanthay Contemporary, Zurich, in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2008; Countdown, Nature Morte, Delhi in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2008 and many more.

Art Project No.: P4     
AMITABH KUMAR
 

M

These are directed performances that complicate the relationship between creation,repetition and violence. Originally conceived as a treatise on Boredom, M places the viewer in situations of their own creation that leave them with feeling culpable to the creation of easily avoidable knowledge.

M takes a cue from a history of interactive and participatory performances and tries to render the act of participation meaningless over a series of 3 directions.

These directions are flashed across a LED display board and the viewers are first directed to create an Earthquake, then a Memory and finally be participants to a Murder.

Amitabh Kumar is a designer/artist from New Delhi, graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda and has worked as a part of the Sarai Media Lab (2006 -2010) where he researched and made comics, programmed events, designed books and co-curated an experimental art space. He is a visiting faculty to the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and is an initiating member of the Delhi based comics ensemble, The Pao Collective. In 2011 he curated City as Studio along with Magda Kardasz at Zacheta National Art Gallery, Poland. In 2012 he was a part of a residency and exhibition On the Sidereal curated by Prayas Abhinav at The Guild.

VIDEO LOUNGE: 

BAIJU PARTHAN 

MANIFESTO (Engineered Fruit)

Manifesto explores the enterprise that aims to modify and engineer reality as well the environment to suit our constructed ideas of perfection- from plastic surgery to genetic engineering. The video intimates the unanticipated returns such ventures bring into our experience of the world.

The video is a looped narrative depicting a pear (an engineered GM fruit) being revealed from under a silken shroud. The fruit then slits open to momentarily reveal its core of skull seeds, before falling off to land on the soil below…

CHARWEI TSAI
1980
AH!

“‘Ah!’ is a video that celebrates the religious diversity and harmony by using a range of voices from people of various backgrounds chanting “Ah”. “Ah” is a sacred sound that many major religions around the world embrace, e.g.: “A-llah “, “A-men”, “A-mitabah”, “A-lleluia”, and “A-OM”. The work aspires to connect a sense of inner peace that is within us all.”- Charwei Tsai.

Charwei Tsai was born in Taiwan and presently lives and works in Taipei and Paris. Tsai graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design and Art & Architectural History (2002) and completed the postgraduate research program at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2010). She has had solo exhibitions in Taipei, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bogotá and Mumbai with The Guild in 2010 and her projects have been included in various international exhibitions, including the ‘J'en Rêve’ at Fondation Cartier, Paris, France (2005), inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006), ‘Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves’ at the ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2007), ‘Traces du Sacré’ at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008), the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial (2009), and Taiwan Calling at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2010), Yokohama Triennale and the Ruhrtriennale (both in 2011), a solo presentation at Art Hong Kong (2012), ‘Phantoms of Asia’ at Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2012), ‘Boundaries on the Move’ at Herzliya Museum, Israel (2012) and ‘Eattopia - Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition’ at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2012). In 2013 Charwei Tsai will be participating in Sharjah Biennial 11, curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Tsai’s works are in the collection of Mori Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery. In addition to her art practice, Tsai has published an artist’s journal Lovely Daze twice annually since 2005.

POOJA IRANNA 
1969

Towards a Choking Presence

“The spectator seated inside a moving bus witnesses nature with all its beauty, heading towards a destination. There is serene greenery around, with traffic at few places denoting human presence. One almost gets carried away in this journey when with a turn there is a halt which changes everything. One encounters shots of concrete city wherever one looks. There are concrete manmade structures everywhere .There is no escape from them .They stand as hindrances all around .These however magnificent, obstruct the journey leaving one stranded in between them. This makes it impossible to continue, think or even feel the natural ambience one has come through.

The artist shows that the presence of the concrete jungles around us has matured so much that we could be fast approaching a halt in thinking of growing further.

The work is a journey of man’s ecological development towards an overgrown civilization.

The existence of dense man made habitats can leave us with no road to take or continue towards development as it has virtually gone beyond our control and is almost ready to even choke us.”
-Pooja Iranna

Pooja Iranna received her MFA from the College of Art, New Delhi. Her selected awards have been, Charles Wallace India Trust Award in 2002, and the Outstanding Women Achievers Award by (YFLO), a wing of FICCI, India in 2009. She has also been one of the Celeste prize finalists in 2010 for her video Another New Beginning. Her Solo, ‘Of Human Endeavour’, at The Guild, Mumbai was selected among the twenty shortlisted for Skoda Prize 2010. Her solo, ‘In the Waves and Underneath’, at Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi was shortlisted for Skoda Prize 2011. Some of her solo shows include, ‘In the Waves and Underneath’, at Palette gallery, New Delhi (2010); ‘Of Human Endeavour’, at The Guild, Mumbai (2009); ‘Metamorphic Mathematics’, Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi (2003-04); ‘Reflections’, Wimbledon School of Art, London (2002); ‘House of Cards’, at Art Inc, New Delhi (1999). Her selected group shows include ‘Cynical Love: Life in the Everyday’, curated by Gayatri Sinha, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art; ‘Fragility’ curated curated by Rakhee Balram , Art Alive,Gurgaon, India; ‘Fragile’, 1x1 Gallery, Dubai; ‘In you is the illusion of each day’ ,curated by Maya Kovskaya,Latitude 28; ‘Fabular Bodies’, curated by Gayatri Sinha, ‘Harmony Art Foundation’ ; Palimpsest, at AICON New York; Celeste Prize Exhibition, Second Edition, New York; International Streaming Festival, 6TH edition, The Hague, Neitherlands; ‘Liquid Cities & Temporary Identities’, Video art & architecture event, Netherlands; ‘Feminine Recitals’, curated by Veerangana Solanki, Exhibit 320, New Delhi; ‘India Revealed’, curated by Antonio Manfred at Cam Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy; Korea-India Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition, Seoul, Korea and ‘Emerging India’, at the Henry Moore Gallery, London.

RAVI AGARWAL

In which he labours to reinsert aura into the no longer desirable commodity
to make it desirable once more, in order to exchange it for monetary value.

The interrupted cycle of nature is inscribed by mass produced commodities which serve to fulfill wants and desires, and direct lives and materials. “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside of us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.” wrote Marx.

Value is added throughout the chain with labour and technology, as both become equated in monetary terms. An „aura. of desirability determines the price, till it becomes worthless, as waste, only to be recovered back into the commodity cycle by the labour of the waste picker. There is an ongoing theatre of aura and decay. Intertwined in this economy are narratives of many lives, often homogenized through contestations of power and powerlessness.

Ravi Agarwal is a photographer artist, writer, curator and environmental activist. He explores issues of urban space, ecology, capital in an interrelated ways working with photographs, video, performance, on-site installations and public art. Agarwal has participated in several international shows including Documenta XI (Kassel 2002),‘Zones of Contact propositions for the Museum’, co-curated by Vidya Sivadas, Akansha Rastogi, Deeksha Nath, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, 2013; ‘The Needle on the Gauge: The Testimonial Image in the works of Seven Indian Artists’, curated by Ranjit Hoskote, Contemporary Art Centre of SA, Adilaide, Australia, 2012; ‘Newtopia’, curated Katherina Gregos, various Museum venues, Mechelen, Belgium, 2012; ‘Critical Mass, Contemporary Art from India’, curated Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel, 2012; ‘Z.N.E, Examples to Follow’, curated Adrienne Goehler, traveling exhibition, Berlin, Mumbai, Adis Ababba, Beijing; ‘Horn Please,’ Kunstmuseum, Bern, 2007; ‘Indian Highway’ (2009 ongoing); ‘Generation in Transition,’ National Gallery of Art, Warsaw & Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithunia; ‘The Eye is a Lonely Hunter, Images of Humankind,’ at Fotofestival Mannheim_ludwigshafen_Heidelberg; ‘After the Crash’ at Museo Orto Botanico, Rome; his recent solo show being ‘Of Value and Labour’, The Guild, Mumbai; ‘Flux: dystopia, utopia, heterotopia,’ Gallery Espace, New Delhi. In 2013 he will be participating in Sharjah Biennial 11, curated by Yuko Hasegava. Agarwal recently co-curated a twin city public art project, Yamuna-Elbe.Public.Art.Outreach. He writes extensively on ecological issues, and is also founder of the leading Indian environmental NGO, Toxics Link. He is an engineer by training.