TARQ: Phallocratic Heterotopia.Memory, botany and ecology play key roles in Makanji’s artistic idiom.

Apnavi Makanji

About the Artist

Apnavi Makanji's body of work spans the mediums of drawing, installation and video. Their preoccupations center around displacement, ecology with an emphasis on botany, explorations of memory and the idea of home. The interaction of this synthesis with the construct of urban spaces and the socio-economic structure of our times, lies at the core of their work.

Their last solo show was Soil as Witness | Memory as Wound, TARQ, Mumbai, 2019.Their other solo shows include Travails of the Wandering Memory Seed, Galerie Félix Frachon, Brussels, 2016, Domus Vulgus, Art Asia Miami (with support from The Guild NY) Miami 2010; Domus Vulgus, The Guild NY, New York 2010.

Makanji recently participated in the Dhaka Art Summit (February 2020). They have taken part in several group shows including CLAUSTROPHOBIA ALPINA II – Subliminal Illuminations & the Shadows of Flight, curated by Varun Kumar, Forde Geneva, 2022; NATURE YOU ARE, Theatre Benno Besson, Yverdon Les Bain, 2022; HEAT, Espace Labo, Geneva, 2022; (ME)(MORY) curated by Dipti Anand, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2021; I LOVE #ArtistesDici a public intervention facilitated by the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2020; Narrow Road to the Interior, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2019; Remembering the Present, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2018; Carnets, Halle Nord, Geneva, 2017; Raving Disco Dolly on a Rock ‘n’ Roll Trolley, Envoy Enterprises, New York, 2014; Considering Collage, Jhaveri Contemporary, Bombay, 2013.

Makanji lives and works in Geneva.

Artist Photo Credit: Stephanie Hügli

About the Exhibition

Apnavi Makanji’s second solo exhibition at TARQ, PSYCHOPOMP, comes at a pivotal time in the artist’s life and practice. Featuring their drawings, collages, mixed media sculptures and a video, the works in the show are about post-colonial extractivist histories, queering the future, human connection and navigating the current 

Phallocratic Heterotopia.Memory, botany and ecology play key roles in Makanji’s artistic idiom. In this show, Makanji’s artworks merge visuals of biological species with images of extractivism, 

highlighting how removed our idea of nature is from the truth of our actions towards it. An example of this is Styx, an installation of found objects and blueprints of crude oil extraction sites in West Africa belonging to the French Elf petroleum company, which portray the artist’s concerns on subjects of neo-colonialism, slave labour, and extractivism. 

Juxtaposed with this bleak reality of the world, a portion of this body of work explores what is termed by the artist as, “the possibilities of a post anthropocentric world through a queer lens”. Here, Makanji views being queer as the ability to adapt, as well as the ability to be kind, compassionate and soft. As described by the artist, “PSYCHOPOMP guides us toward but also embodies this proposition of a Queertopia that stems from a collective, intersectional awareness that is not exclusive to our species but extends itself to every other species including the botanical and mineral worlds.” 

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