Shifting Shapes – Unstable Signs: Contemporary Indian Art at Yale School of Art Gallery

South Asian Art at the Yale Center for British Art

South Asian Art at the Yale University Art Gallery

 

The Yale University School of Art will inaugurate its new art gallery with Shifting Shapes-Unstable Signs, an exhibition that will showcase recent work in diverse media by artists from India and the Indian Diaspora. The School of Art Gallery, which will be open to the public and will house approximately four exhibitions per year, adds a new perspective to the University�s already rich visual-art offerings, which include the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. This particular exhibit is the first step in the School of Art�s larger project of bringing examples of the most vital contemporary art from around the world to Yale and New Haven. Recognizing that �the art world is no longer centered around New York or, for that matter, anywhere in particular, School of Art Dean Robert Storr says, �the new gallery will break out of the North-American/East-Coast centered view of the art world�, and �bring to our students, staff and the public �breaking news from a diversity of international artists. This is but one example of the ways in which the School is forging active links with cultural centers from S�o Paulo to Beijing; from Moscow to Johannesburg; from Madrid to Istanbul.�

Organized by Dean Robert Storr and Jaret Vadera, a student at the School of Art, Shifting Shapes � Unstable Signs brings together 33 works by twelve artists, based primarily in Delhi, Mumbai, Toronto and New York, in a bid to explore the elusive and ambiguous nature of the signs and symbols of cultural, national and gender identity that are reflected in contemporary art from the region. One of the main aims of the exhibition is to spark conversations about tensions between the illusion of fixity and the malleable nature of signs and symbols in a cosmopolitan context. As such, these works of art establish a dialogue that crosses geographic borders and spans generations and media while undermining the static borders that seek to lock cultures, gender, sexuality, and national and religious identities into place.

The artists whose works will be showcased in the exhibition include: Brooklyn-based Chitra Ganesh, whose drawing, installation, text-based work and collaborations are inspired by buried narratives and marginal figures typically excluded from official canons of history, literature, and art; Jaishri Abichandani who, as a self-described political artist, uses her installations, objects, videos and performances to integrate multiple aesthetics reflecting my identities as a feminist South Asian American artist; Abir Karmakar, whose work addresses issues of gender and sexuality amongst other things; Nalini Malani, who uses electronic media and traditional paint-based techniques to explore women�s issues, particularly with regard to those dense areas of social and familial relationships in which women’s skills often go unappreciated; Riyas Komu, whose paintings, sculptures, photographs and installations adapt images selected from mass media, transporting them into the pictorial space of painting, and its anterior histories of representation; Bhupen Khakhar, described by biographer Timothy Hyman as �possibly the most provocative painter in contemporary Indian art�; Gauri Gill, whose photographic work engages not just with India but also captures the experience of the South Asian diaspora in the United States; the Raqs Media Collective formed in 1992 by independent media practitioners Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta., whose work engages with urban spaces and global circuits, persistently welding a sharp, edgily contemporary sense of what it means to lay claim to the world from the streets of Delhi; Bharti Kher, who uses the �bindi� as her trademark material of choice to engage with questions of identity, multiplicity and tradition; Brendan Fernandes, whose work represents an investigation into the concept of authenticity, as an ideological construct that both dominant and subordinate cultures use to their own ends; Shilpa Gupta who uses the medium of the internet to discuss issues of globalization and religion; Tejal Shah who uses video and photography to produce work that is political, feminist and �queer�; Vivan Sundaram whose work diverse body of work is united by a common emphasis on questions of placement, dislocation and relocation; and Ram Rahman, a social activist and documentarian, with a rich body of street photography.

In addition to the exhibition of the works of art themselves, Shifting Shapes � Unstable Signs will also feature two related panel discussions supported by the South Asian Studies Council: the first, on February 10th 2009, will center on the question of cultural production in the cosmopolitan context and deal with creative issues of art history, audience and authenticity (some of the panelists comprise artists featured in the show, including Brendan Fernandes, Chitra Ganesh and Jaishri Abichandani), and the second, on February 17th 2009, will deal more broadly with issues revolving around curation and exhibition organization.

This exhibition, like others to follow at the School of Art Gallery, will be marked by very high levels of student involvement in all creative and organizational aspects. School of Art students will be involved in selecting and installing the works; writing about them; publishing brochures, and more. In this way the Gallery will serve as a classroom or workshop in which students learn first-hand how exhibitions are conceived and produced, how art occupies space, how site-specific art may be created for a particular space, and how context informs content.

Shifting Signs � Unstable Shapes will be on exhibit at the new Yale School of Art Gallery from January 26th to February 27th 2009.

Yale University School of Art Gallery

32 Edgewood Avenue

New Haven, Connecticut