The significance of curatorial discourses and the diversity within the narratives they can approach cannot be overstated. In an era marked by rapid change and cultural fluidity, the role of curators is increasingly pivotal. They are the bridge between art and the public, shaping perceptions and dialogues around cultural production. The ability to engage with diverse perspectives allows curators to craft a more inclusive and comprehensive narrative, reflecting the richness of our global heritage.
The exhibition currently on display at Bikaner House by Gallerie Splash stands as a testament to this imperative. This showcase is born from a deeply personal passion project, initiated through extensive discussions and deliberations about the challenges faced in India regarding dialogues around the broader spectrum of Art and Culture, both within India and across South Asia. The region’s prolific output in cultural production, philosophical discourses, rituals, and traditions presents a unique opportunity for discursive, intuitive, and systemic engagement.
In today’s ever-changing world, having the right mindset coupled with an imaginative eye is crucial to examining Art and Culture in diverse ways, thereby articulating a cohesive and positive vision for the future. New ways of thinking, knowing, and working, combined with synchronised collective, collaborative, and cooperative methods of engagement, form a formidable strategy to navigate this highly unpredictable environment, where competitive advantage can vanish unexpectedly.
The inaugural exhibition of the Gallerie Splash Curatorial Fellowship programme provides viewers with an opportunity to experience these novel approaches to the world, firsthand. The ideas presented in these four distinct exhibitions resonate with these innovative concepts. This work represents the first of many opportunities for emerging curators in South Asia to embark on transformative journeys of cultural engagement. The curatorial fellowship serves as a gateway to fostering dialogue, understanding, and innovation within the vibrant tapestry of South Asian arts and heritage.
The following exhibitions invite viewers to explore ‘Curatorial Perspectives: Emerging Voices,’ offering a fresh lens through which to engage with the world and paving the way for a new generation of curatorial excellence.
begin at the end of the mapcurated by Avani Tandon Vieira
Avani Tandon Vieira is a researcher, curator, and archivist who recently completed a PhD in Criticism and Culture from the University of Cambridge. Before her doctorate, she had received a bachelor’s degree in English from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a Master’s in World Literature from the University of Oxford.
In For Space, the geographer Doreen Massey offers provocatively: “a map of a geography is no more that geography…than a painting of a pipe is a pipe”. By setting the cartographic object alongside the art object, Massey is gesturing at the fundamentally creative nature of image-making, whether artistic or documentary.
In the contemporary world, and in India in particular, the role of the map is both quotidian and extraordinary. For a nation born of cartographic separation, and one that has survived many remakings, the project of knowing and seeing space is paramount. Equally, it is vulnerable to lapses. What the map makes known is known. What it chooses not to know disappears, through violence or time.
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begin at the end of the map asks a simple question - what would we see if we looked beyond the limits of the map as we know it? The works in this exhibition answer this question through a framework encompassing ecology, language, and documentary practice. Speaking from a variety of disciplines and mediums, they show us that in India, life is often lived in the gaps between representation and reality, the map and experience. As our cities grow denser, informal settlements of tarpaulin spring up. At the hard edges of our borders, communities trade livestock and language. In our forests and valleys, a fragile landscape of sound and life exists out of sight.
Against the flatness of the map are thousands of rich, interlinked ways of being. Reclaiming them, through speech, text, and image, is an act of justice. This is the work of the artist, and of the citizen.
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Prelude to Civilisation, curated by Aayushi Majithia and Rohit Murmu
Aayushi Majithia and Rohit Murmu are first-year Master's students at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, pursuing postgraduate studies in Art History & Aesthetics.
Ere long ago a man from heavy rain walked under the great bough. He learned the way of leaves, and joining two of them made the first sartaal. He added more leaves and made the patda. Under heavy skies, in pouring rain he remembered the first tree and wove the gungoo. Thus, was created the first act of gathering.
These simple accumulations, were his earliest possessions, later giving way to objects of daily needs; he learned to collect, to break, to weave, and to appropriate. In other words, he had learned to tame nature for his own benefit, he laid the first sow for a larger civilization. The history of art is thus also a reflection of mankind's earliest ideas of accumulation.
These simple accumulations, were his earliest possessions, later giving way to objects of daily needs; he learned to collect, to break, to weave, and to appropriate. In other words, he had learned to tame nature for his own benefit, he laid the first sow for a larger civilization. The history of art is thus also a reflection of mankind's earliest ideas of accumulation.
Prelude to Civilization’ is a humble effort to give a glimpse into these modest inventions. The other half of the stimuli— the approaches of earliest minds, apart from the colourful acts on rocks and earth; from gods and religions, from rituals and spirituals
Itinerant Oralities, curated by Kritika Saxena
Kritika Saxena works at the Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum in Ahmedabad while also pursuing a Master’s in Design at the Department of Design Space at NIFT, Gandhinagar. She specialises in socio-cultural research and its implications on design pedagogy, with a strong foundation in literature.
“Each element of a painting or sculpture, interior installation or technical equipment, is conceived not as the exclusive expression of a single function, but as a nucleus of possibilities which will be developed through coordination with other elements.” - Frederick Keissler
Storytelling, a timeless oral art form is a conduit for society’s collective memories and inclinations. Rooted in the Kaavad tradition of Rajasthan, such oral narratives are vitalized through the sacred performances of the Kaavadiya Bhats, transmitting folklore and communal identity oscillating between the Suthars and the Jajmans. Jyotindra Jain in “Picture Showmen: Insights into the Narrative Tradition in Indian Art” elucidates that these beliefs, practices, and terminologies associated with the ritual context of some of the painted panels and scrolls of storytellers, reveal that these not only serve as visual aids to stories narrated but have the status of a sacred object or shrine. Kaavad symbolizes collective identity while embodying fluidity and resilience in response to socio-cultural dynamics, where the symbiotic relationships observed through the framework of the Actor-Network Theory within this craft highlight diverse actors of the environment, people, and technology shaping the cultural phenomenon intertwined in complex networks.
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The curatorial proclivity is rooted in the concept of Keissler’s ‘Endless House’, where the exhibition space is envisioned as the shrine. As the viewers embark on a sacred pilgrimage, progressing through ‘kiwads’, the visual journey unfurls the layers of artistic symphonies showcasing the practices of ‘makers’ dedicated to this living tradition that mirrors the multisensorial storytelling of the Kaavad folk art. The viewers veneer through the contemporary collaborative practices of the academic explorations of Nina Sabnani, who broadened the horizons of this tradition within and beyond its origin; revitalizing the interests of the makers and patrons alike, narrating its relevance through myriad mediums. Transcending the contemporary nuances, are the practices rooted in genealogies of the traditional makers like Satya Narayan Suthar and Dwarika Prasad Jangid, the award-winning practitioners of the art form. The acme of this exhibition is realized inside the ‘sanctum’, where the kaavadiya bhat, or the ‘teller’ awaits the viewers, who become his ‘jajmans’ as they engage in the sacred storytelling of this living tradition.
This interplay of tacit knowledge, artistic practices, and cultural evolution prompts critical reflection on various other traditions rooted in storytelling amidst societal changes, emphasizing the gradual divorce of the performative involvement of the ‘tellers’ from the material culture
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Yesterday Came Suddenly, curated by Vaidehi Gohil
Vaidehi Gohil, with a background in Art History from M.S. University Baroda, had worked as a writer and researcher with various organisations and is currently working with Tarq, Mumbai.
The past often washes up on the shore, leaving sand under your tongue. Abrupt flashes of realisations cease before we can catch them. Melancholy, grief, pain, joy, and small acts of love when felt with intensity must root themselves deep within us as if memories could be a place. They simply wait there, like a trinket that fell behind the drawer only to be discovered by surprise. I find these transient moments of being extremely gratifying but people actually remember very little.
Fleeting memories make us wonder about the strangeness of the everyday, the ordinary that tugs itself under the visible. The eye often settles on what is beautiful and/or comprehensible, turning away from things that appear mundane, blurry, impenetrable, or even intimidating. There occur moments that are mysteriously ordinary but are still remembered, like my grandfather’s erratic snores that punctuated a good night’s sleep.
These thoughts start pollinating as we read–“Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there… What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more”, demands Susan Sontag. Her bold reclamation for assessing art insists on digressing from arriving at meaning or content, in favour of revealing the sensuous surface of art–”to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
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