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Rites/Rights/Rewrites: Women’s Video Art from India Hartell Gallery at Cornell University. Ithaca, USA , 1st to 6th March 2004 Monali Meher, Surekha, Sonia Khurana, Sharmila Samant, Darshana Vora, Shilpa Gupta and Shakuntala Kulkarni Exhibition curated and presented by: Arshiya Lokhandwala The exhibition looks to examine the intervention of video within the practice of contemporary Indian women who use the body as an allegory to locate their concerns and contexts. In this exploration, the exhibition analyses various factors that inform the women’s artistic concerns including globalisation, postcolonial feminist critique and issues of race and gender within the context of India today. Although all works in the exhibition reference the artists using their images and bodies, this exhibition rather than engaging with individual reflection, emphasizes the usage of corporeal bodies as “weapons” embodied as sites of resistance. Rites/Rights/ Rewrites, engages with the exploration of contemporary Indian women in the process of rewriting their own histories; through the breaking of the patriarchal tradition and codes, creating new signs and signifiers in the process. Rites/Rights/ Rewrites presents the work of seven such women artists who employ video as a new language to articulate their resistance, namely Sharmila Samant, Shilpa Gupta, Darshana Vora, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Surekha, Sonia Khurana, and Monali Meher from the megalopolis of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Each of the works in the exhibition alludes to the body as a metaphorical site of resistance: the fragmentation of the body in Passing ( Sharmila Samant ); body as memory in Blue Nostalgia (Monali Meher) ; the mediated body in Untitled ( Shilpa Gupta); the persisting body in Bird ( Sonia Khurana); the absent body in Mesma Trilogy ( Darshana Vora); body as an allegory in Confinement (Shakuntala Kulkarni) and finally the body as a double ( Surekha). In Mesma Trilogy (Version I), conceived as a six monitor video installation Darshana Vora references themes in movie scripts connecting them to her process of art making. The three movies referenced in this work are Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001- A Space Odyssey’, Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Adaptation’ and Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris’. Interpreting the Mesma Trilogy as ‘3 movies that have had a mesmerising effect’ on her Darshana draws on the investigative approach of the nature of an object as a phenomenon which is elusive, mysterious , mesmerising and informed by ‘thinking’ kinetic entities that explore an object or multiple objects in unusual circumstances, hinting at altered states. Just as the screenplay of any movie can only precede the visual, the artist’s videos anticipate the space between an artwork being explored and completed .The screenplay is presented in the form of a rolling credit, a scrolling text that describes the action in the movie without having any visuals itself. It remains a reference of the film, excerpting the main theme, hoping to remind the viewer of their experience of the film, or introducing the film to viewer, if they have not seen it. Darshana Vora, born in 1969 in Calcutta, but raised in Mumbai, has worked in various media including objects, installation, performance, video, interactive, site-specific and sound works since 1996. She has had 3 one-person exhibitions in India and one in Melbourne, Australia and has exhibited widely in group shows worldwide. Notable recent works include her participation in ‘De Inrichting,’ a site- specific sound installation in GGZ, NHN Institute for Treatment of Schizophrenia in Heiloo, Netherlands, 2003; a running LED installation within a taxi for ‘Peace Taxi’, Toronto, 2003; an outdoor, site-specific public work at the Museum Of Domestic Design and Architecture, London, and an interactive card game, ‘Peace Patience,’ as part of Sakshi Gallery’s annual exhibition in Mumbai India. The artist currently lives and works in London. In her performative work, Monali Meher, a Mumbai based artist currently living in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is concerned with converting daily activates into ceremonial acts, celebrating her body in her own personal ritual. In Blue Nostalgia, Monali uses her body to communicate the personal memories of longing and belonging, also commenting on female stereotyping within Indian society. Using the color blue, along with a meditative soundtrack to indicate a state of mind, Monali uses this piece to bridge the past with the present. Shot in Mumbai in a street salon, Blue Nostalgia alludes to the everyday act of massaging, which evokes within her memories of her childhood, home and the familiar. However, while engaging in the massage, she is suddenly made aware of the intimacy underlined within this routine act and its taking place in a public sphere. In the sudden realisation that her mother’s hand has been replaced by that of stranger, she becomes conscious of the boundaries she has transgressed between the private and public and from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Nevertheless, Monali reconciles herself to enjoying the experience and the touch of the male masseur, being unabashed, transgressing new boundaries. She uses the camera lens as a mirror, where she meets with the self-gaze, gazing out at the public, seemingly viewing herself through the eye of the viewer enjoying the moment and looking ahead into the future. Monali Meher was born 1969 in Pune, India and graduated with B.F.A. in Painting, Sir J.J. School of Arts, in Mumbai. She was awarded the ‘UNESCO--ASCHBERG’ award and a Rijksakademie residency in 1998 and 2000. She has held several solo exhibitions including-“Bio-Morphosis”, Lakeeren Art Gallery, Bombay, 1996.“ Untitled”, F.I.A. Gallery, Amsterdam, 1998.‘Reflect’,(A Personal Window Display), Lakeeren Art Gallery, Bombay & Gallery Juttner, Vienna, 1998, “Theatre Of Memory", Lakeeren Art Gallery, Bombay, 1999 and “Ceremony”, Artkitchen gallery, Amsterdam, 2004. "Bollywood Has Arrived", Amsterdam, 2001. "Labyrinths", Asian Art-Biennale d'Art Contemporanea, Genoa, 2001“Moist”, Art Asia Pacific, Multi Media Art Festival, Beijing, 2002.She has held several performances all over the world including “Protected Reflection' Lakeeren Art Gallery, Bombay, 1999. “Non-Repeating Loop”, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, 2000."Camouflage", Nehru Centre, London, 2001.“Practising Nostalgia” & “Old Fashioned”, CEIA , Belo Horizonte, Brazil.“An Auspicious One”, Artkitchen Gallery, Amsterdam, 2004. Workshops & Participation-"Performer & Mediated Image", Monte Video, Amsterdam, organized by Amsterdam-Maastrich Summer University,2001.-Participated in Performance workshop with Marina Abramovic, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, 2001. Shilpa Gupta, in her video piece Untitled, engages with the idea of the gaze and viewership in the age of information manipulation by media. Attempting to reverse /suspend the mundane act of watching television, the artist takes on the role of a performer, engaged in an everyday act of watching TV, as well as swapping roles with the soap opera stars by becoming one herself. In Untitled the two monitors, positioned to face each other, present seven avatars of the artist watching television, making the artist her own audience and reflection, in the process cutting the viewer out of the spectatorial loop. By giving television its own life, Shipa comments on the enigma of the middle-class Indian viewer who feels trapped in the everyday routine , offering an opportunity to escape reality by taking on different persona’s or identity. Shipa by the reversing the notion of the artist and the viewer, suspends the relationship between the real and the unreal, commenting on the ubiquitous manipulation of imagery and information by the media, and thus raising the question ‘Is TV based on me or am I based on TV'. Shilpa Gupta (b.1976) lives and works in Mumbai where she has studied at the J J School of Fine Arts in 1997 and had residency in Kanoria Centre Studios, 1999 Ahmedabad and at Unesco-Aschberg residency at CYPRES, Aix en Provence 2001. She has participated in shows in Mumbai at Gallery Chemould, Lakeeren Art Gallery, and National Gallery of Modern Art and at Sakshi Gallery. In 2001, her work was shown in the Century Cities at the Tate Modern in London, Trash by Experimenta in Melbourne in solo shows by Mercer Union (Toronto), Gallery 4A and Artspace (Sydney), Moving Image Centre (Auckland) and at the Art School of Aix en Provence. In 2002 her work was shown at Site+Sight, La Salle Gallery, Singapore, New Territories, Glasgow, Wayside Diety at Art Inc, New Delhi, New Indian Art : Home Street Shrine Bazaar Museum at Manchester City Gallery, Self at IMA, Brisbane, Mango at Talwar Gallery, New York, Moist by MAAP in Beijing and in the Upstream project in Hoorn and Amsterdam. In 2003 her work was featured The House of World Culture (Berlin) Indonesian National Gallery (Jakarta) Video Brasil (Sao Paulo) Peace Taxi (Toronto) and Video Art Road Show (Mumbai), NGMA (Mumbai) and launched a Net Art Commission with Tate Online, London. And in 2004, she showed at Oxford Bookstore (Mumbai), Fukuoka Asian Art Gallery (Japan) Borusan Art Gallery (Istanbul) and at the Transmediale (Berlin) In Confinement, Shakuntala Kulkarni locates herself in the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots that took place in Gujarat and shook the entire country of India. Being privy to the reports and documentation about the atrocities on women, especially the mass rapes, forced abortions and burnings and brutal victimization of the minority community (in this case, Muslims), left the artist deeply shaken. Living in Mumbai, far from the site, Shakuntala felt a sense of despair intensified by the impotency of being unable to help, heightened by the fascist ways of the Gujarat state government. Confinement shows the artist’s support for the condition of women by trying to reinact the world of fear, despair, and trauma. The struggle to sustain hope and not succumb to the situation is the core concern of her artistic practice. Using a tight, restricted space, with minimum light and color, as well as repeated sound and body language, Shakuntala tries to create an experience of entrapment and claustrophobia in an attempt to empower herself by never giving up and getting up again and again. Born in 1950 Shakuntala Kulkarni graduated in 1973 from J.J.School of Art, Mumbai. She has held several solo exhibitions in India including 2001/2002 ‘Reduced Spaces’ multi-disciplinary video installation, Jehangir Art Gallery, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, Gallery Sumukha Bangalore, 1999 “Godhadi”, Art Inc, New Delhi, “Chitrakala Parishad”, Bangalore, 1998 “Godhadi” Gallery Chemould Mumbai ,1996 ,Caryatid –A viewpoint ,sculpture installation and charcoal on paper ,Prithvi Gallery, ,Jehangir Art Gallery Mumbai. Participated in several group exhibitions In 2003, crossing generations :diverge forty years of Gallery Chemould, National gallery of Modern art, Mumbai. In 2002, Life in the time of Cholera APEEJAY Gallery, New Delhi. In 2000; Tao Gallery, Mumbai, In 1999 Ideas and Images, National Gallery Modern Art Mumbai, Icons of Millenium, Lakeeren Gallery Mumbai. In 1998, Kendal Walla through Indian Eyes, Warehouse Gallery, Brewery Art Center ,Kendal, UK .and University of North Lancashire, Preston, UK. In 1997, The Looking Glass self an exhibition of self-images, Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai.50 yrs of art in Mumbai1947-1997National Gallery of Art in Mumbai. She was awarded the Residency at Brewery Art Centre Kendal, U.K. in 1998. The artist lives and works in Mumbai. Sonia Khurana in her performance video Bird , the first of a series of short films, reveals disturbing moving images of the herself , shot with an unstable, hand-held camera while moving in rapid, fluid movements. Shot partly in long shots Bird reveals the artist's own naked and overweight body furiously flapping around the studio, attempting to somehow rise above her obstinate, gravity-bound body. In trying to address the inarticulateness of the body the artist engages in a comic, tragic encounter with the body as a failed flight; investigating two kinds of limitations: the body confronting its own flesh, and the forces of gravity. The work questions the current forces imposed by society, conventions and dealing with the female stereotype of the body, which the artist attempts to resist. Sonia Khurana, born in 1968, studied at the Delhi College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has done a residency at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Her solo exhibition with video-work and installations, Lone Women Don't Lie, was shown in Delhi and Calcutta in 2000-01. Her group shows include, in 2003: the tree from the seed (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo); in 2002: Kapital & Karma (Kunsthalle, Vienna); Private Mythologies (Apeejay Media Gallery, Delhi); Camouflage (Nehru Centre, London); South African Women's Art Festival (The Playhouse, Durban). Recent video screenings include Amsterdam International Short Film Festival (Cinema de Balie); Maastricht Outdoor Film Festival (Hedah); Digital Orgy: International video art (Bangkok); Self (Institute for Modern Art, Brisbane). The artist lives and works in Delhi. In Passing, Passing -as/ by /away/ out/ over...Sharmila Samant uses her ' ‘Body' as an allegory, contextualised by historical and contemporary societies as a contested site of race, sexuality, gender and artistic expressions. The body is evoked by absence- through fragments (eyes) and colors (bodily fluids). Alluding to the figure as site for political, social, personal and ideological shifts, Sharmila changes the imprinted notions of 'the body' and the construction of identity by questioning the ambiguous identity constructed on difference / semblance. The inclusion of factors such as climate, attitude, colour, hair and other genetic indicators also contribute to the construction of this identity. In Passing, the projecting on the floor where the colors of liquids passing down the drain correspond to colors of skin/bodily fluids expresses the body’s excesses. Situating the scene in a shower stall, a recurrent site of cleansing, violence, sex and voyeurism- popularised through cinema also suggests the presence of the body. However, the artist inverts this relationship by using the plan of a Panopticon; where the absence of the body denies the purpose of the voyeuristic gaze, addressing various aspects of transgression and reflexivity. Sharmila Samant was born in Bombay in 1967, and graduated with a Batchelor of Fine Arts from J.J. School of Fine Arts in 1989. She currently lives and works in Mumbai where she is active on the arts scene as a founder of the Open Circle artist’s initiative. She has been selected for international artist residencies including Gasworks, London in 2001 and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 1998-2000. Her installations and video works deal with issues of identity within a global context and have been included in many major international exhibitions including the influential ‘Century City’ at Tate Modern in 2001, Body /City in the House of World Cultures, Berlin and in Pabellon de Cuba in Vedado, Havana, Cuba as part of the Havana Biennale and in ‘ Seed to the Tree’, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter’s Oslo, Norway in 2003. Samant has also been selected by curators Kathryn Standing (Liverpool Biennale, 2002), Roger McDonald (‘Moving Collection’, Tokyo &d New Zealand, 2002) and Amit Mukhopadhaya in (Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, 2003). Surekha’s video Reaching Myself uses the double image of her body--juxtaposed one on the other. The artist represents herself being pushed, rolled and pulled in all directions by strong sea waves as she offers no resistance to the natural phenomena, with her body in constant motion. Subsequently this video, projected onto the corner of a studio wall, where the artist performs once again, by laying ‘still’ on the floor , alludes to the artificiality of the situation of the controlled studio body watching the same uninhibited body in the sea. In the process of witnessing the projected sea waves, the body-in-the-video gets pushed towards the body-in-the-studio, finally the projected body emerging and of the studio body merge into one. Surekha in this work conveys the urgency for women to empower themselves and seize control of their lives. Using the sea as an allegory for time, she implies that time is running out and that women need to make choices and take a stance for what they believe. This is the only recourse. Born in Bangalore, India. Surekha studied fine arts at Ken School of Arts, Bangalore and Kalabhavan, Santiniketan (1985-92) after having completed a degree in science. She has worked as Artist-in- Residence at Gasteatelier Krone, Aarau, Switzerland (1999); Art Space studios, Bristol (2001), UK; HIAP, Helsinki(2001);Vermont Studio Center (2002) and CCA7, Trinidad(2003). She has held solo exhibitions entitled "traces and memories of a body", "the native body", "selving a body" and "eye of a needle" at Bangalore and Lakeeren gallery, Mumbai.Selected group shows: "under the Skin", Aarau (1999), "british make" Bristol(2001); "skin deep" Helsinki(2001). She has also participated in group exhibitions in India and abroad like, "camouflage", Nehru Center London(2001); "self", IMA Brisbane(2002); "other side of the sky", Unesco, Paris(2003); and "sites of recurrence", Boras Museum, Sweden(2003). Arshiya Lokhandwala was the founder and curator (1995-2002) of Lakeeren Art Gallery in Mumbai. She completed her B A and M A Sociology in 1986 and 1991 respectively. She worked in Advertising in client servicing from 1987 -1994. She was the recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust award in 200-1 for an M A in Creative Curating at Goldsmiths College, London. She was a participant at the Documenta 11 Education program in Kassel in 2002 under the artistic curator Okwui Enwezor. She is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Art department at Cornell University, USA. Contact information: Arshiya Lokhandwala, GM08, Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca 14853. USA. Email: aml63@cornell.edu |
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