The Guild is delighted to announce The Chaos Trilogy I: Disorder Under Heaven, an upcoming exhibition curated by Premjish Achari and featuring the works of Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Gieve Patel, G. R. Iranna, K. P. Reji, Kumari Ranjeeta, Mithu Sen, Navin Chahande, Pooja Iranna, Rashmimala, Sheba Chhachhi, and Sudhir Patwardhan.

The exhibition will preview at our Alibaug location on Saturday, the 5th of November from noon, and continue until the 5th of March, 2023.

The Chaos Trilogy

This three-part exhibition locates itself in the intersections of the matrix of chaos, change, desire, and crisis that exploded after the 90s in postcolonial India, or the period now widely identified as the post-liberal India. Diverse literature and artistic endeavours have mapped the social, political, economic and cultural shifts of this period. The period has been associated as an important catalyst in the development of contemporary art in India due to the rapid economic shifts, compounded by access to new technological developments, access to a globalised network of art, and the turbulent political climate that fore grounded sectarianism and fundamentalism.

These three exhibitions open the conversations on the chaotic situation we are embroiled in to examine the majoritarian politics, identity formations, issues of home/homeland, citizenship, the refugee crisis and climate change. Through these exhibitions and various activities we bring in artists, writers and academics to make sense of these dramatic developments to ask how should we respond to these urgent questions: Are we witnessing a worldwide rejection of liberal democracy and its replacement by some kind of populist authoritarianism? How have we ended up in this situation? Where will we be in five, ten or twenty years’ time? Is it possible to contain the global chaos and achieve a turnaround? How could contemporary art configure the symptoms of this chaos and would it be possible for it to forecast what lies ahead? How will artistic identities be reconfigured in this situation where concepts such as citizenship and nationality are under greater threat than ever before?
 

Part 1: Disorder Under Heaven

The first part of the exhibition maps the history of India from the 90s onwards to assess the social, political and economic shifts that played a crucial role in the contemporary turbulent situation. Apart from witnessing various political movements, the three decades in question is also marked by important anniversaries of various political events globally. This period is also coeval with the consolidation of a global art network and the rise of art festivals and biennials. This exhibition attempts to map the chaos of the three decades visually and aesthetically. This will not be a chronological analysis, instead, it sets out to examine the iconic moments of this particular period to draw a connection with the present. The curatorial attempt is to configure chaos as an important phenomenon of the last three decades. The exhibition will aesthetically respond to the consequences and the possibilities that arise from this chaos.

The Guild

The Guild was established in 1997 with an aim to function as a semi-institutional space within the bustling art-hub of Mumbai, India. Since its inception, it has been providing a platform for discursive practices, innovation and experimentation in contemporary art. The Guild represents a roster of artists of diverse generations who have brought in robust dialogue within and across their disciplines. The Gallery has held major retrospectives of Navjot Altaf, Sudhir Patwardhan, and G. R. Iranna in collaboration with premier national art centres.

The gallery has published a number of books with essays by preeminent critics and curators on contemporary Indian artists, such as Sudhir Patwardhan, Navjot Altaf, Jyoti Bhatt, K. G. Subramanyan, and T. V. Santhosh, amongst others.

The Guild celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2022. For this silver jubilee year, The Guild is organising a series of critical curated exhibitions marking the trajectory the gallery, its artists, and the Indian art world has taken in the past twenty-five years. 
 

For more details, please contact us at:
theguildart@gmail.com, teamattheguild2@gmail.com