Things are vanishing before us - Premjish Achari

We live in a time when the digital and the physical are converging together in an unprecedented manner. The proliferation of screens and humanity’s addiction to it has flattened our sense of perception; it has irrevocably altered our visual experience.

( Premjish Achari )

 In our society, screens have become magical tools used by ‘augurers and haruspices’ or those who read omens in the stars, flights of birds and the entrails of animals, uncovering guilt and foreseeing the future. Through screens, we navigate the netherworld of imaginations. They have become our magic mirrors; it appears that we have formed a Faustian pact with the digital world. Software and digitised data are replacing the traditional physical dimensions of objects. We increasingly prefer Bitcoins and digitised banking rather than paper currency, digital images to printed photographs, e-books to paper books; we even seem to spend more money on our online personas. 

( Black Molasses by Aman Khanna)

Digitisation of objects, information, and emotions has irrevocably altered existing ways of knowing, doing and being. Will digital versions of objects such as artworks, photos, clothes, etc., render them obsolete? Will objects eventually shed corporeal form and become flat and virtual in the digital world? Will we define ourselves increasingly through what we consume and create in the digital space? Will our digital avatars overtake our physical selves? 

 The proposed exhibition attempts to analyse and perhaps even salvage the role of objects in our life, by paying particular attention to their ability to evoke the past through nostalgia and memory. Objects remind us of who we are, we often use them to demonstrate our identity. There is little difference between us and what we define as ours. The proliferation of software and digitised data are replacing the traditional physical dimensions of objects. In this passage of rites towards the virtual objects when things are vanishing before us I invite artists to contemplate on the function of objects, do they see this as a revolutionary paradigm shift, or do they prefer the old ways of possessing physical objects and its production more relevant in the preservation of memory and evocation of nostalgia. 

This exhibition is a key to unlock your memories. After entering this labyrinth laden with a series of objects to trigger your memories you will be able to reflect on how people interact with objects, how objects often symbolise something more than their intrinsic nature. 

-  by  Premjish Achari

Featuring:

Aman Khanna | Arti Vijay Kadam | Atul Bhalla | Chandan Gomes | Chinmoyi Patel | Dayanita Singh | Mansoor Ali| Muktinath Mondal| Nikita Maheshwary| Prajeesh A.D.| Riya Chatterjee| Roshan Chhabria| Sharmila Samant| Sumedh Rajendran| Umesh P K| Varunika Saraf| Waswo X Waswo

PIN POSTER:MUMBAI

Mumbai Gallery Weekend (MGW) is a unique initiative that commenced in the year 2012 by leading contemporary art galleries of Mumbai. Its prime objective is to engage not only existing but also potential collectors and supporters of the arts, in order to broaden the reach and relevance of contemporary art. Since its inception, the Weekend has featured an international level of art and conversation set within a diverse set of locations across the city.

Printmaking allowed her to edit and impose through the use of various surfaces and troughs created by deeper etches.

( TS/File photo/facebook/GalleryChemould )

In a society where gender decides on your freedoms a certain inhibition of one’s self manifests in a loss of self ownership. Many woman face such an existence in South Asia, their lives decided by male counterparts, most decisions forced, misogyny manifests mostly in violent forms of suppression.

Tejswini Sonawane born in a family of sisters, often lost the freedoms she enjoyed within her home once she stepped out on to the streets of Sholapur, her hometown. Encouraged by few for her uncles she joined the Sholapur Drawing College to pursue a career in art. She was unsure with her vocation and her practice until she enrolled for a Masters in Printmaking at the Sir JJ School of Art. Initially living in a hostel for girls she began to evaluate her life and the role of her father in her decisions. 

Then she began morphing self portraits by super-imposing images of animals. Printmaking allowed her to edit and impose through the use of various surfaces and troughs created by deeper etches. Sonawane dislikes animals but she uses their forms to distort human faces, she believes misogyny expresses and inhabits in our expressions through animal metaphors. Screeches of a cat became her expression of revolt against a patriarchal wish that disregarded her as an artist but rather wished she were married to man she did not know.

Graduating from the JJ School of Art she lost her place at the hostel and relocated to Dharavi to live among her relatives. Here she lived within the stink of putrid drying animal skin reminding her of Sholapur. Her community the Dhor, traditionally animal skin tanners who purchase skin from butchers, tanning them for cobblers. Within a small tenement living with her uncle’s family people were up-close throughout the day. Thats when she began working on her solo, sometimes etching scenes from her days babysitting her sister’s daughter entertaining her with conversations she strung up with a feral cat, or making portraits of a weeping younger sister - who was often ridiculed by others for her weight.

82 gum-bites, deep etches and dry points form the body of a solo debut using morphed animals that are surreally stretched. Portraits of cats, cows and dogs take on human anatomies while their expressions inhabit ours. Grisaille and rust renderings of colour remind us of the zinc and copper plates used to register these images, giving them a tonal quality that softens their dramatic content. The ‘Jatakas’ became popular in Maharashtra as tales that followed a courageous socio-political movement against caste exploitation. These Buddhist tales through animals reminded humans of their virtues and failings, Sonawane somewhere revisits these traditions to narrate stories of comic ignorance.

Sumeshwar Sharma

Clark House Initiative

OM PURI- 18 October 1950 – 6 January 2017 - RIP

(source image google /www.livemint.com)

Om Puri was born in Ambala to a Punjabi family. His father worked in the railways and in the Indian Army. As he had no birth certificate or records, his family was unsure of his date and year of birth, however his mother told him he had been born two days after the Hindu festival Dussehra. When he began his schooling, his uncle chose 9 March 1950 as his "official" birthday, however as an adult when he moved to Bombay, Puri looked up when Dussehra was celebrated in 1950, to establish his date of birth as 18 October