Vision Exchange

Ashim Ahluwaliawas born in Mumbai, India in 1972. He studied film at Bard College in New York.

His first film, the feature-length documentary, John & Jane, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005. A blend of observational documentary and science fiction, John & Jane follows the stories of six ‘call agents’ that answer American 1-800 numbers in a Mumbai call center as they aspire for the American Dream. Exploring an imperialism of a different kind – a psychological one that explored virtual existence, John & Janewas described by Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper, as the “No.1 pick” at TIFF.

John & Jane had its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival, New Directors/New Films in New York, Vancouver Film Festival, Cinema Du Reel and others. It won the international award at the European Media Art Festival, the Director’s Guild of America Jury Award and the Maysle Brothers Award at the Belfast Film Festival.

Ahluwalia’s first fiction feature, Miss Lovely had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012. It was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Ashim Ahluwalia’s non-conformist works, a middle ground between pulp and high art, have been exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.

His short film, made in collaboration with modernist painter Akbar Padamsee, Events In A Cloud Chamber, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2016. It was made both as a single-screen film as well as an installation that reimagined Padamsee’s 1960s apartment-studio as one of the primary sites of Indian avant-garde practice.

Sight and Sound’s Jonathan Romney has described Ahluwalia as “a very impressive talent”. He was named “one of the ten best emerging film directors working today” by Phaidon Press in “Take 100: The Future of Film.”

Sarindar Dhaliwal is a Toronto-based artist. She was born in the Punjab, raised in London, England and has lived in Canada since 1968. Dhaliwal received her BFA with a concentration in sculpture at University College Falmouth, UK, and her MFA from York University. She is currently enrolled in the Cultural Studies PhD program at Queens University.

Dhaliwal has exhibited widely in Canada since the 1980s. A retrospective exhibition, entitled the Radcliffe Line and other Geographies, curated by Marcie Bronson (Rodman Hall, Brock University in St. Catherines) toured to the Reach in Abbotsford, BC and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa in 2015-16. More recently, she participated in the following group shows: Yonder (Koffler Gallery, Toronto 2016), Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto(Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2016) and India Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art, FotoFest 2018 Biennal (Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, Texas).

Through his paintings and assemblages, Atul Dodiya engages with both political and art history in a way that entwines global /public memory and local/personal experience. In his most recent series of paintings Dodiya appropriates the images and styles of famous artworks. By doing this he pays homage to his influences, but also ‘borrows’ their identities through a kind of painting role-play: copying becomes a form of ‘channelling’ or re-enactment, weaving the master’s identities and ideas to Dodiya’s own (and vice versa).

Gauri Gill (b. Chandigarh, India) earned a BFA (Applied Art) from the College of Art, New Delhi; BFA (Photography) from Parsons School of Design/The New School , New York; and MFA (Art) from Stanford University, California. She has exhibited within India and internationally, including MoMA PS1, New York; Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; Kochi Biennale; 7th Moscow Biennale; Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Wiener Library, London; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and Whitechapel Gallery, London. Her work is in the collections of prominent institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Museum, London; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington and Fotomuseum, Winterthur, and in 2011 she was awarded the Grange Prize, Canada’s foremost award for photography.

Gill’s practice is complex because it contains several lines of pursuit. These include an almost two decade long engagement with marginalised communities in rural Rajasthan called Notes from the Desert (since 1999)—this ongoing archive contains sub-series such as The Mark on the Wall, Traces, Birth Series, Jannat, Balika Mela, and Ruined Rainbow. She has explored human displacement and the migrant experience in The Americans and What Remains. Projects such as the 1984 notebooks highlight her sustained belief in collaboration and ‘active listening’, and in using photography as a memory practice. Beginning in early 2013, Fields of Sight is an equal collaboration with the renowned Adivasi artist, Rajesh Vangad, combining the contemporary language of photography with the ancient one of Warli drawing to co-create new narratives. In her most recent body of work, Acts of Appearance, (2015—), the artist has worked closely with the paper mache artists of the Kokna tribe in Maharashtra, using unique masks to tell fictional stories improvised together of contemporary life in the village. Working in both black and white and colour, Gill’s work addresses the twinned Indian identity markers of class and community as determinants of mobility and social behaviour; in it there is empathy, surprise, and a human concern over issues of survival.

Tanya Goel’s architectural paintings index and map an archive of material collected from deconstructed houses, which were built in a modernist style prevalent in Delhi from the 1950s to 70s. The artist makes her own pigments from a diverse range of materials including charcoal, aluminium, concrete, glass, soil, mica, graphite and foil, many sourced from those sites of architectural demolition. Goel’s paintings are deeply invested in the process of their creation, and are informed by her interest in the relationship between light, colour and material. She has, over the past three years, experimented with drawing and painting on the surface of segments of extracted stone and concrete, developing an ongoing body of ‘frescoes’.

Tanya Goel holds a BFA (Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda), PBS (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and MFA (Yale University School of Art, New Haven). Alongside numerous group shows, she has held solo exhibitions at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Mumbai and Nature Morte in New Delhi. From March to June 2018, her frescoes, wall drawings and paintings were shown at the 21st Biennale of Sydney. Goel’s works are in the public collections of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, UBS, Mumbai, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA. She lives and works in New Delhi.

Bio to come…

Sunil Gupta (b. New Delhi 1953, India/Canada/UK)  is a photographer, artist, educator and curator currently enrolled in a doctoral programme at the University of Westminster. Educated at the Royal College of Art, he has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years focusing on race, migration and queer issues. In the 1980s, Gupta constructed documentary images of gay men in architectural spaces in Delhi, his “Exiles” series. The images and texts describe the conditions for gay men in India at the times. Gupta’s recent series “Mr. Malhotra’s Party” update this theme during a time in which queer identities are more open and also reside in virtual space on the internet and in private parties. His early documentary series “Christopher Street, New York”  was shot in the mid-1970s as Gupta studied under Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research and became interested in the idea of gay public space.

Gupta’s published work includes the monographs “Queer: Sunil Gupta” (Prestel/Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011), “Wish You Were Here: Memories of a Gay Life” (Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2008), and “Pictures From Here” (Chris Boot Ltd., New York, 2003). His latest show (with Charan Singh), “Dissent and Desire” (catalogue) was at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston till April 29th and his last book, “Delhi: Communities of Belonging” was published by The New Press, New York 2016. His work has been seen in many important group shows including “Paris, Bombay, Delhi…” at the Pompidou Centre, Paris 2011 and is currently at Tate, Britain. He is Visiting Professor at UCA, Farnham, and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He was Lead Curator for, “Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh” at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2011). He was Lead Curator for the Houston Fotofest 2018. His work is many private and public collections including; George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate, Harvard University and the Museum of Modern Art.

www.sunilgupta.net

He is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto; Sepia EYE, New York; Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi

Jitish Kallat was born in Mumbai in 1974, the city where he continues to live and work. Jitish Kallat has exhibited widely at museums and institutions including Tate Modern (London), Martin Gorpius Bau (Berlin), Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane), Kunst Museum (Bern), Serpentine Gallery (London), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Palais de Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Hangar Bicocca (Milan), Busan Museum of Modern Art, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo), ZKM Museum (Karlsruhe), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo), Arken Museum of Moderne Kunst (Copenhagen), Institut Valencia d’Art Modern (Spain), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Jean Tinguley Museum (Basel) and the Gemeente Museum (The Hague) amongst many others. Kallat’s work has been part of the Havana Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Asian Art Biennale, Curitiba Biennale, Guangzhou Triennale and the Kiev Biennale amongst others.

His solo exhibitions at museums include institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Mumbai), the Ian Potter Museum of Art (Melbourne), CSMVS Museum (Mumbai), the San Jose Museum of Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2017 the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi) presented a mid-career  survey of his work titled Here After Here 1992-2017 curated by Catherine David.

Reena Saini Kallat’s (b. 1973, Delhi, India) practice spanning drawing, photography, sculpture and video engages diverse materials, imbued with conceptual underpinnings. She has widely exhibited at Institutions across the world such as Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Manchester Museum, UK; Tate Modern, London; Kennedy Centre, Washington; SESC Pompeia and SESC Belenzino in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Casa Asia, Madrid and Barcelona; ZKM Karlsruhe in Germany; Hangar Bicocca, Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Busan MOMA; Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Chicago Cultural Centre amongst many others.

Her works are part of several public and private collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Musee des beaux-arts Canada, Ottawa; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Norrtalje Konsthall, Sweden; Saatchi Gallery, London; Bhaudaji Lad Museum, Mumbai; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Pizzuti Collection, Ohio; Ermenegildo Zegna Group, Italy; Burger Collection, Hongkong amongst others.

Bharti Kher was born in 1969 in London, England and has lived in New Delhi, India, since 1993. She studied painting, graduating in 1991 from Newcastle Polytechnic. In 1992 she travelled to India, deciding to live there permanently. Kher’s practice is radically heterogeneous, encompassing painting, sculpture and installation. Overarching themes within her work include the notion of the self as a multiple and its interlocking relationships between man, animal and associated notions of hybridity. She manages to link abstraction and figuration through her practice and exploits the drama inherent in objects, tapping into mythologies and the numerous diverse associations a thing or place can bring.

Kher’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and was included in scores of group exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide. Recent solo presentations include:  ‘Chimeras’, Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel Switzerland (2018), ‘Dark Matter’, Museum Frieder Burda, Berlin ,Germany (2017), ‘This Breathing House’, Freud Museum, London, England (2016), ‘The Laws of Reversed Effort’, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France (2016), ‘Matter’ Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, ‘In Her Own Language’, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, part of The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (2016), ‘three decimal points. Of a minute of a second of a degree’, Hauser & Wirth Zürich (2014) and ‘Misdemeanours’, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2014).

Recent group exhibitions include: ‘Surface Work’ Victoria Miro, London, England (2018), ‘Facing India’ Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany (2018), ‘Like Life: Sculpture, Colour and the Body (1300-Now)’, The Metropolitan Museum (2018).

Divya Mehra works in sculpture, print, drawing, artist books, installation, advertising, video, and film and is known for her meticulous attention to the interaction of form, medium, and site. Recontextualizing references found in music, literature, and current affairs, her acerbic body of work addresses the long-term effects of colonization and institutional racism. Mehra’s work has been presented as part of exhibitions, screenings, and commissions, including with Creative Time (New York), MoMA PS1 (New York), MTV (New York), the Queens Museum (New York), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Artspeak (Vancouver), Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Toronto), the Images Festival (Toronto), the Beijing 798 Biennale (Beijing), Bielefelder Kunstverein (Bielefeld), and Latitude 28 (Delhi). Mehra holds an MFA from Columbia University and is represented by Georgia Sherman Projects. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award.

Bio to come…

Jagdeep Raina (b.1991), is a Canadian artist from Attawandaron territory, Guelph, Ontario. He holds an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and has been an artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Camden Arts Centre/Slade School of Fine Art.

Jeebesh Bagchi, b. 1965, New Delhi, India
Monica Narula, b. 1969, New Delhi, India
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, b. 1968, New Delhi, India

Raqs Media Collective have been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work, which has been exhibited widely in major international spaces, locates them in the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory – often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. They live and work in Delhi, based at Sarai-CSDS, an initiative they co-founded in 2000. They are members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series.

b. 1961, India

Dayanita Singh’s art uses photography to reflect and expand on the ways in which we relate to photographic images. Her recent works, drawn from her extensive photographic oeuvre, are a series of mobile museums that allow her images to be endlessly edited, sequenced, archived and displayed. Stemming from Singh’s interest in the archive, the museums present her photographs as interconnected bodies of work that are replete with both poetic and narrative possibilities. Publishing is also a significant part of the artist’s practice: in her books, often published without text, Singh extends her experiments on alternate forms of producing and viewing photographs.

Bio to come…

Bio to come…

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra work collaboratively with a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installations, interactive games, video, performance, and design. Thukral & Tagra work on new formats of public engagement and attempt to expand the scope of what art can do. They break out of the mediated and disciplinary world and create multi-modal sensory and immersive environments.

Their earlier work dealt with tropes of migration and motifs of a globally manifested consumer culture. It questioned the provenance of Indian identity and its various articulations. Their recent work has dealt with the interpretation of Indian mythological narratives and symbols in ways that renew and enliven a largely pedantic and static area of the cultural material.

From a pop visual character to a pre-dominantly abstract visual approach and compositional philosophy, Thukral & Tagra constantly shift in terms of their grammar and vocabulary. The abstract suggestions of an everyday experience of architecture and urban design in Gurgaon (Haryana, India) and Chandigarh (Punjab, India) is embedded in their visual language. They have offered sociopolitical commentary that is implicit in their aesthetic for the past fifteen years.

Rajesh Vangad was born in 1975 in Ganjad village in Dahanu, Maharashtra. He is a bearer of the Warli style of painting, which is a traditional form of painting belonging to the indigenous people of Warli. He learnt the art at a young age from his parents—particularly his mother; and later from masters like Jivya Soma Mashe. He has painted noteable murals at the Craft Museum, New Delhi, the Homi Bhaba Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai and the T2 Terminal at the International Airport in Mumbai. His work has been exhibited across India and internationally in the UK, Spain and Japan. Vangad has published three books: My Gandhi Story (Tulika Books), Kabir Saamagri (part of Kabir Project) and The Indian Crafts Journey, as well as a map of Maharashtra (Dastkaar Haat Samiti). He has conducted workshops on Warli painting with students in Pune and New Delhi, among other places. Since 2013 he has been working on a collaborative series with the photographer Gauri Gill, Fields of Sight, which has been exhibited across the world including at Documenta 14, Kassel;  the 7th Moscow Biennale, Clouds⇄Forests, Moscow and Prospect 4: The Lotus In Spite Of The Swamp, New Orleans.