Clark House Bombay : 'Soulmates (within time)'/ Lisa Mara Batacchi

Clark House Bombay : 'Soulmates (within time)'/ Lisa Mara Batacchi - preview.

11 June 2015 

6 - 10 pm  

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Bull and Bird ,  5.5 inch by 7.5 inches , Krishna Reddy ; Early 1950s printed 2015 by Nikhil Raunak

Clark House Initiative A Presentation by Nikhil Raunak Tuesday, June 9, 7pm Asia Art Archive in America 43 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 $5 suggested donation Please RSVP here Clark House Initiative is a curatorial collaborative and a union of artists based in Bombay. Established in 2010 by Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma, it is located in a building that was formerly an office of pharmaceutical research, an antiques store, and the shipping office of the Thakur Shipping Company that had links to countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Japan. Curatorial interventions in the space hope to continue, differently, these histories of internationalism, experiment and research.   Please join us for a presentation by Nikhil Raunak,   ​artist member   of Clark House Initiative. He will reflect on the 'Workshop Model', a method of engaging with public and regional institutions in India. This model was developed by Clark House Initiative, with Anant Nikam at the printmaking studio of Sir JJ School of Art, and acknowledges the legacy of the workshops of the artist and pedagogue Krishna Reddy.     Nikhil Raunak (b. 1988) is a multi-discipline artist  ​ ​  who graduated in 2011 from Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay in painting and printmaking  ​. ​  Raunak is also founding member of Bombay-based artist collective 'Shunya'. Shunya, meaning 'void', is used to define a mathematical concept of nothingness. The title explains a beginning from a point of neutrality. Shunya was formed in 2012. Raunak is a recipient of Inlaks Fine Art Award 2015 and participated in numerous exhibitions including Arranging Chairs for Ai Wei Wei, ICU-Jest, Kochi-Muzirius Biennale 2012, we have arrived nowhere, Transnational Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2013, and INSERT-2014 Mati Ghar New Delhi 2014.

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First of the Clark House Krishna Reddy-Judy Blum Fellows, Nikhil Raunak will began his residency in New York this April for 3 months, during which he researche and used the studio facilities at Flux House 2. The residency is supported by Judy Blum and Krishna Reddy for young artists to come live and practice in New York. Raunak will archive Reddy's drawings and prepare a project on experimental printmaking through his interactions with Reddy. Nikhil Raunak (1988) often works with cryptic codes that critique conceptual practice in the arts, inventing languages, creating videos and drawings that all stem from his study of graphic printmaking and portraiture.  

​Bull and Bird , was a Copper Plate was made by Krishna Reddy was trying to experiment with various carving tools. The bull is accompanied by a small dead bird carved under. The plate was lost and was then returned by Reddy's student Mark Johnson who found it at the New York University and he returned it to Judy Blum and Krishna Reddy. Nikhil Raunak collaborated with Reddy to print 22 editions of line etchings from the plate which had never been published before.

 

Gulf Labor Artist Coalition

Letter from sixty+ curators, critics and museum directors to UAE art institutions, and their affiliates

June 1, 2015

To:
Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Tourism Development & Investment Company, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, NY, USA
New York University, New York, USA
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Agence France-Muséums, Paris, France
Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE

Recently, artists Ashok Sukumaran and Walid Raad were denied entry to the UAE on grounds of “security”. This comes after NYU professor Andrew Ross was similarly barred from flying to Abu Dhabi in March. Sukumaran and Raad have a long history of vital and sustained engagement with the UAE, often on the invitation of your institutions. Ross is a professor of standing in New York’s academic community. It appears that the reason these three members of our global arts and academic community were denied entry to the UAE is their involvement with the Gulf Labour Coalition.

As you know, Gulf Labour is an artist-initiated group that has been active since 2010, asking museums and institutions being built on Saadiyat Island to create better conditions for their workers. These conditions of the creation of a cultural world should be of concern to us all, and the proposals of artists in this regard should be seen as a matter of debate, not of “security”. We assert that artists and academics should be allowed free passage to conduct research and work that is done in a peaceful and productive manner.

We the undersigned oppose the barring of Ashok Sukumaran, Walid Raad and Andrew Ross from the UAE. We state that denying artists visas, stopping and deporting them after years of their work in the region, creates a chilling precedent and makes it difficult for arts and academic institutions in the UAE, and those working with the UAE to claim regional dialogue and artistic freedom. We urge your institutions to work with the concerned authorities to lift these bars on their travel.

Sincerely,

Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions, Tate Modern, London
Andrea Lissoni, Senior Curator International Art (Film), Tate Modern, London
Andrea Thal, Artistic Director, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director, Creative Time, New York
Anselm Franke, Head of Visual Art and Film, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Anton Vidokle, Founder, e-flux, New York
Bartomeu Marí, Director MACBA, Barcelona
Beatrix Ruf, Director Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, New York
Charles Esche, Director, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Charles Guarino, Publisher, Artforum Magazine, New York
Chris Dercon, Director, Tate Modern, London
Christine Van Assche, Chief Curator-at-Large, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Claire Hsu, Founder-Director, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Defne Ayas, Director, Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam
Dennis Lim, Director of Programming, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York
Doryun Chong, Chief Curator, M+ Hong Kong
Emilie Villez, Director, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris
Eva Franch, Chief Curator and Executive Director,  Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York
Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Fawwaz Traboulsi, Writer and Historian, American University of Beirut, Beirut
Franck Gautherot, Co-director Le Consortium, Dijon
Geeta Kapur, Critic and Curator, New Delhi
Glenn Lowry, Director, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Hammad Nasar, Head of Research & Programmes, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Hila Peleg, Curator, Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens
Iftikhar Dadi, Professor, Department of History of Art, Cornell University, New York
Jean-Marc Prévost, Director, Carré d’art, Nîmes
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Raqs Media Collective, New Delhi
Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Jitish Kallat, Artist and Curator, 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennial
Kate Fowle, Director-at-Large, Independent Curators International, New York
Kathy Halbreich, Deputy Director, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Koyo Kouoh, Artistic Director, RAW Material Company, Dakar
Lars Nittve, Executive Director, M+ Hong Kong
Laura Raicovich, Director, Queens Museum, New York
Lucy R. Lippard, Critic and Writer, Galisteo
Maha Maamoun, Board member, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Mai Abu El Dahab, Director, Young Arab Theatre Fund, Brussels
Mami Kataoka , Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
Maria Lind, Director, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
Marie Muracciole, Curator, Director of Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon
Marta Kuzma, Rector, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm
Nancy Adajania, Cultural theorist and independent curator, Mumbai
Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, Independent curator, editor of L’Internationale Online, Paris
Nato Thompson, Chief Curator, Creative Time, New York
Negar Azimi, Senior Editor, Bidoun, New York
Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, London
Patricia Falguieres, Professeur à l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists Association, New Delhi
Rana El Nemr, Board member, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Ranjit Hoskote, Cultural theorist and independent curator, Mumbai
Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Sebastien Delot, former Modern and Contemporary Art Curator of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Head of the Collection of The Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Saint Etienne
Seungduk Kim, Co-director Le Consortium, Dijon
Sharmini Pereira, Director, Raking Leaves, Sri Lanka
Sheena Wagstaff, Chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Solange Farkas, Director/Curator, Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Sao Paulo
Sukhdev Sandhu, Film critic and writer, New York University, New York
Sumesh Sharma and Zasha Colah, Clark House Initiative, Mumbai
Sunjung, Kim, Artistic Director, Asia Culture Information Agency of Asian Culture Complex, Gwangju
Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, Managing Trustee & Honorary Director, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai
Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Vasıf Kortun, Director of Research & Programs, SALT, Istanbul and Ankara
Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh, Vice-President, Arab Image Foundation, Beirut

http://gulflabor.org/timeline/

The Unimportant Histories of Architecture Ouso Chakola | Debut Solo Clark House Bombay

The Unimportant Histories of Architecture

Ouso Chakola | Debut Solo 

Clark House Bombay 

Saturday 20 June 2015

Preview: 5.00  pm to 9.30 pm 

Artist Talk - 4.00 pm ( Alternative Printing Processes in Photography) 

Exhibition continues to 4 July 2015 

Open all days except for Monday from 11 am - 7 pm.

Ayodhyapattinam 2015 , cyno-type  

The road to Tiruvannamalai wanders through a dry and dusty scape that is largely agrarian, the temples do not compete with large industrial installations that have been touted since  independence in a secular India as the natural competitors to temple complexes.  But a certain buoyant 'cottage industry' takes industrial scale as you approach the town.  Workers from as far as Orissa whittle down large granite black boulders into many faced Ganeshas, neo-Sai Babas and pantheons of the Dravidian rationalist political mythology.  Just outside Ayodhyapattinam - concrete is casted into Goddesses for the 'Gopupurams' or mountain inspired towers of southern Indian temples, apart from them MG Ramachandran,  Karunanidhi and the ‘people’s lady’ caricatured along with local politicians, decorative armed guards and lions meant for gates that seem to suffer from both genetic and visual sculpting history disorders.

 Ayodhyapattinam is its popular name but in rational Tamil Nadu officially it is known as Nedungundram.  Ayodhyapattinam  is a smaller complex of temples  dedicated to Lord Rama that are seeing an unfortunate revival that is attributed to politics rather than heritage preservation.  Outside the temple stands a majestic hand carved wooden chariot, probably of Burma teak, financed by the Chettiars who made their fortune in the Rangoon Rice Trade, its wheels now have given way and it has sunk into the courtyard that leads to the temple.  By standers say a new chariot is on its way, to be sculpted with an automotive mechanism and better colours, some say the present one would be destroyed and the others say it would be carted away by the Archaeological Survey of India.   A baksheesh allows us permission to document the main hall outside the altar of the temple.  A smaller temple to the monkey god Hanuman has been painted on with emulsion paint, and the main temple awaits its coat, a coat that will hide the pain staking frescoes inside.  As renewal even of gods is an essential Hindu obsession, architectural or aesthetic histories are less cared off specifically in a moment where our nation is keen to write new histories that favour one over the other and play Medicis or Cholas to new temple complexes - the one at Ayodhyapattinam seems to be out of favour.  Ouso Chakola is interested in documenting some of these fragments as they get edged out by a mightier visual culture.  

For Ouso the narrative is immediate in his images, he doesnt seek his audience to linger,  its layer lies in the inherent drama of their production.  Ouso studied alternative - rather traditional pedantic processes of photography at Monash University Melbourne and since 2005 has practiced as a photographer in Kochi, Kerala.  Photography is a medium that often has the burden of comparison or scholastic solidarities.  Henri Cartier-Bresson is one such photographer who is often seen as an important mention in the timeline of photography and always mentioned when we discuss photography in India.  Bresson was in India at opportune times, such as the death of Gandhi or as Nehru pondered what to do with a fledgling republic.   But Bresson soon stylised a genre of Indian exotica, the beauty our nation continuously uncritically offers.  Instagram & French tourists have since continued the inherent tradition.  Stepping out of that, Ouso makes caricatures of other plundered inheritances that plague  Tiruvanamalai.  

The Annamalaiyar temple is one of the five most favoured places for the Tamil Saivite cult that is based on literature and poetry inspired by Shiva. The tevarams or religious literature celebrates the beauty of the presiding deity and how the temple's architecture orchestrates itself for a frolic between Parvati and Shiva.  Shiva manifests himself into a pillar of light, seen during 'Deepam'  when millions flock to the town to witness a divine light on the red Annamalai mountain that symbolises one of the 5 elements of Shiva.  The town also invited and lured one of India's most gifted philosophers Sri Ramana Maharishi.  Sri Ramana, adored the space of the secular, for him de-materialisation of one's life arose from the personal space,  Lord Annamalai was the perfection of aesthetic wants and its unaesthetic - the anaesthetic to our troubled lives. Bresson remarkably captured the divine light as the Sri Ramana breathed his last, fighting cancer.  A legacy of touristic voyeurism grew from Bresson's photographs; Ramana is now plundered for all the material that is left on him and about him.  

Tiruvanamalai was crafted during the early Chola period -9th century, by master craftsmen who were said to have descended from the  divine architect Vishwakarma,  since then the city has passed through various masters who have expanded on the temple.  But today many families of Sthapathis or traditional sculptors have large yards where imported granite and marble is polished into fine rock sculptures of various pantheons using heavy-duty electric stonecutters.  Not only do they produce more statues in lesser time, the statues have finer decorative edges - neo-classical elements from Rome & Greece have intermingled with Chola yore to create large statues that make us wonder.  But the discerning eye realizes that the hand-chiseled  traditional Chola statues depended on a play with perspective, that is cinematic,  and when one walks through the corridors of the temple we realise this cinematic play, the drama that is instantaneous. But statues of neo-lore cannot depend on painstakingly made and thought out sculptures, rather conceptual abilities passed down by tradition are erased by neo-political needs from religion.  Dravidian architecture or rules of depiction do not sit well with the new conservative Indian, it has not been made popular in the numerous television series based on religious epics; Bollywood has rather ignored it. Becoming a lesser history that is not applicable to school texts.  

Barber-Kadai 2015, Tricolour Gum-Bricomate 

Ouso captures the drama that unfolds at the Ramana Ashram, Sri Ramana has been encapsulated within polished marble, Europeans and some Indians perambulate around his shrine,  many of them ignorant or blissfully ignoring the woes of the city.  Many of the ‘expats’ are escaping the woes of the world.  The genre of exotica has served them well.  Sri Ramana at an early stage embraced the newer technologies of his time, there are many photographs of him by the greats such as Cartier-Bresson, footage of him exists on all kinds of forms of camera,  all of this has been digitised for sale at the curio shop in the ashram.  Exoticism is voyeurship, Ouso turns the lens  at first by ignoring them and at times capturing them.  Off all that is not romantic and perfect in the temple city are turned painstakingly into cynotypes, van dykes, argotypes, and tri-colour gum bichromate prints.  

Ouso has been experimenting with traditional methods of photography, it arose out of passion but also a couple of glass plates he inherited and were from a studio in Tripunithura  the royal quarter of Kochi that he digitised.  Bresson in Tiruvanamalai is inherited by many who depend on post-photoshop production that depends on dramatising colours and the belief in archival multi-jet printing.  Ouso was invited along with Clark House Initiative by Abul Kalam Azad to Tiruvanamalai on a research residency at the Ekalokam Trust for Photography. Azad established ETP as an organisation to preserve and popularize photography and other art forms among an audience that is not restricted to a rural population.  Azad has always admired the Maharishi, who he says is lost in the crowd of superficiality in the town, the Deepam or the divine light for him rather is the conceptual beckoning to think rather than an act of ritual.  Since then he has had many photographers at his yard where like the sthapatis he nurtures apprentices to photography.  Years of practice allowed Azad to master analogical photography, which he continues while using more accessible attributes of digitisation.  

The  Un-Important Histories of Architecture is not about architectural history but the social history that surround these magnificent edifices,  and  those histories that are unpsoken in the many layers - the Annamalaiyar temple is dedicated to Ardhanarishwara - the half woman and half man form of Shiva & Parvati's union, which is uncertain today in a world where ungendering and sexual attributes are precarious  in a realm of misogyny.  Ouso returns to traditions of photography that use light and labour to throw light on the labour of many lost in a world that believes in the labour of machines & the digit. Ouso recreates the frescoes on the ceilings of Clark House while placing large 'Van-Dyke' prints in forms architectural installations to re-tell his moment near the Annamalais.  

Sumesh Sharma,  Tiruvanamalai, February 17 - 2015  

Ouseph Chakola, 1980,  is an artist based in Kochi, Kerala.  He has studied photography & visual communication with a special Interest in alternative printing processes at the Monash University Melbourne.  His is interested in narratives in photography that question received forms.  

EtP (Ekalokam Trust for Photography) is registered at Tiruvannamalai, founded by noted contemporary Indian photographer Abul Kalam Azad. EtP has been informally working since October 2011 and was legally formed in the year August 2013 by Abul Kalam Azad, Kulanthaivel - an art enthusiast based in Tiruvannamalai, and Tulsi Swarna Lakshmi, a development activist who has a decade of not-for-profit management experience in India and abroad. The main purpose of EtP is to protect and promote contemporary photography and connected art forms. EtP’s vision is to preserve our heritage by creating and preserving photographic visuals of our culture and lifestyle. Rejuvenating the traditional analog medium, technique and processes is the intent behind EtP’s collective public photo art projects. Taking contemporary photography and connected art initiatives to the larger rural population is another driving force behind EtP’s activities and programmes 

http://www.etpindia.org/

Abul Kalam Azad (born 24 September 1964) is a noted contemporary Indian photographer. Abul's photographic works are predominantly autobiographical and expose the areas of politics, culture, contemporary history, gender and eroticism. His works attempts a re-reading of contemporary Indian history - the history in which ordinary people are absent and mainly provided by beautiful images and icons. Abul's works makes an active intervention in the common illustrative discourse of this history. Using the same tool, photography, that chisels history out of a block of ‘real’ human experiences, Abul makes a parody of it. 'Overall, the corpus of Azad’s work can be seen to have a thrust towards an archive of local micro-history at the level of personal memory and in that sense, his works add up to a kind of social anthropology of his land and its people, though not necessarily in the line of tradition of the objective documentary. 

Clark House Initiative is a curatorial collaborative and a union of artists based in Bombay. 

 

Address: c/o RBT Group, Ground Floor, Clark House, 8 Nathalal Parekh Marg (Old Wodehouse Road), 

Bombay 400039. Opposite Sahakari Bhandar and Regal Cinema, next to Woodside Inn. 

  | info@clarkhouseinitiative.org  

Website: www.clarkhouseinitiative.org 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clarkhouseinitiative

 

When Estelle Met Parker & Sound Reasons III #ClarkHouseInitiative

When Estelle Met Parker & Sound Reasons III

#ClarkHouseInitiative

When Estelle Met Parker

Following in the footsteps of Eros, an exhibition co-curated by Sumesh Sharma and Qinyi Lim at the University of Hong Kong Museum and Art Gallery in September 2014, When Estelle Met Parker is series of interventions by Clark House Initiative and a screening program looking at questioning the categorical imperative applied on notions of authenticity and identity and the slippages that allow for different modes of production and knowledge generation.

When Estelle Met Parker takes Bombay as it’s locus and its shared colonial history as a port city in the British Empire with Hong Kong. It starts as a study of the culture of fountain pens in these cities where citizens are guided by the British education system in which the use of fountain pens as a writing instrument is seen as a signifier of privilege, finesse and gravitas. More often than not, different models of this writing instrument have been linked with acts of historical importance rather than its more popular brethren, the Biro ballpoint pen.

The differences between the fountain pen and the biro are many and plenty. These are often based on a certain fascination in the tactile sensorial pleasure during the use of the fountain pen such as the writing angle, the type of paper used, the slowness in the act of writing, the variation in lines and strokes according to the type of nib and customized slant. With each pen, comes certain commitment to authenticity to the works produced but yet in When Estelle meet Parker, this is questioned through the proliferation of imitators of Parker Pens such as Wilson fountain pens in Mumbai and Hero fountain pens in Shanghai. In this intervention, artists of the Clark House Bombay are invited to contribute to the space while reflecting on the use of such fake instruments in the modes of artistic production.

In the spirit of questioning these inauthentic signifiers of privilege, When Estelle Met Parker seeks to claim a key figure back for Bombay and its film history – Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle Thompson, Bombay, 1911-1979), as the first and currently only Indian actress ever to be nominated for Best Actress in the Academy Awards. Nominated for her role in The Dark Angel (1935), Oberon had never acknowledged her Anglo-Indian racial background nor her birth place through her entire professional life. Instead, she adopted the racial identity of a white Australian born in Tasmania – a façade that she maintained till death. ForWhen Estelle Met Parker, we look back at two moments of Oberon’s repertoire – her renowned leading lady performance as Cathy Earnshaw in William Wyler’s classic Wuthering Heights (1939) and her appearance in television show What’s my line? on October 17, 1954 in claiming both her as an actress and an individual.

- Qinyi Lim

Hong Kong 2015 

When Estelle Met Parker is co-curated by Qinyi Lim, Para Site and Sumesh Sharma, Clark House Initiative. 

Artists: Amol K Patil , Caecilia Tripp, Naresh Kumar, Poonam Jain, Prabhakar Pachpute,  Rupali Patil,  Sachin Bonde & Yogesh Barve   

Coalmen, after Monet - Unloading the load of the Earth, Prabhakar Pachpute, 2015 

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Sound Reasons III

a presentation of sound installations 
at Clark House Initiative

Sound Reasons is a record label and a festival for sound art and contemporary electronic music which promotes contemporary practitioners from Switzerland and India, amongst others. Sound Reasons started off as a record Label in 2009 releasing music and curating/ organizing sound art installations and electronic music performances. These activities later diversified and amalgamated into the first edition of the Sound Reasons Festival in 2012, which featured influential artists, like Bernd Schurer and Jio Shimizu. At Sound Reasons praxis has always been the focus while exploring various mediums and processes like publishing CDs, creating a festival and producing live performances and installations.

The event is presented by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with Clark House Initiative, a curatorial collaborative and a union of artists based in Bombay, on the occasion of Draft. A three-day conference at Studio X Mumbai, Draft collectively considers how contemporary art can initiate, invoke and contribute to public debates. The conference is a year-long project that is anchored in nine cities across the world, and will engage with critical discourses and practices related to the public sphere.

Artists: Marcus Maeder, Farah Mulla,  Ish S, Salome Voegelin

Open Studio Soulmates (Within Time) 10 - 16 June Movin'Up prize GAi - Giovani Artisti Italiani Residency : 15 May - 16 June 2015 6.30 pm - 9.30pm 16 June 2015 Clark House Bombay

Open Studio  

Soulmates (Within Time)

10 - 16 June 

Movin'Up prize GAi - Giovani Artisti Italiani  Residency : 15 May - 16 June 2015 

6.30 pm - 9.30pm 

16 June 2015 

Clark House Bombay 

Lisa Mara Batacchi has been a collaborator with Clark House since 2013, when we participated in programmes curated by her in Florence. Medium often have sexual associations, and such can be said of knitting, a practice seen unpopular, time-taking and predominatntly associated with an older female middle-class, Batacchi thus introduces designs into the weave of wool which reinstates the belief of the 'immateriality' of medium - the connotations and associations of it use. We have invited Batacchi for a residency and final open studio on the May 16th She has worked in collaboration with the Gormati Banjaras, who have worked traditionally with weaving and knitting and now live as manual casual labour in the slums of Bombay. We hope to support a programme of public outreach and exhibition that sees Batacchi collaborate with the Bombay community during here time she has worked a paper artisan Bhavesh Shukla, Kritika Balsane a weaver and Clark House member Poonam Jain in a project that is conceptualized along with Italian artists such as Giancarlo Norese and Lapo Binazzi (UFO). In an art context where the conceptual is often exploitative, Batacchi reaches the realm of the avant garde and the contemporary by including the least spoken within the arena.

- Clark House Initiative 

Lisa Mara Batacchi with Sita & Keshu Chauhan Family  and Poonam Jain at Clark House 

STITCH ON THE MOVE

Reema Gehi ,  Mumbai Mirror June 14 2015

A social artist from Italy meets her match in Ambedkar Nagar's Banjara colony to tell the story of life in embroidery.

Ensconced in the tony neighbourhood of Cuffe Parade is Ambedkar Nagar, home to 7,000 members of the Gormati Banjara tribe from Karnataka. Most of the men work at the near at hand Sassoon Docks, while some of the women make their livelihood as domestic helps. But Sita Chavan, 37, adds to her family's income by preserving the nomadic community's textile legacy. She spends most of her day at a sewing machine in her cramped home, stitching the ghagra-cholighungat matha for the women of the tribe. On the day we meet her, she is dressed in a printed saree, its appeal nowhere close to the mirrorwork embroidery the Gormatis are famed for. "Unfortunately, we now reserve traditional wear only for big occasions," she says. On one such occasion last week, she picks a white ensemble scattered with colours of the Indian flag. Together with husband Keshu and daughter Surekha, she is readying to make it in time for the opening of Italian artist Lisa Mara Batacchi's solo at Colaba's Clark House Initiative (CHI). 

Soulmates (Within Time) partly tells the story of a craft Chavan and her ilk have mastered. On the mezzanine floor, an installation of tiny mirror pieces pay ode to this legacy. Two costumes, a collage of patchworks created using knitting and cotton strands (with intricate embroidery) gently stitched on plain cloth, hold pride of place at the alternative art space below. "I share an old tryst with textile," says the 35-year-old, giving Chavan a warm hug. More than a decade ago, Batacchi was pursuing a dream job as research and design assistant at luxury fashion houses, Prada in Italy and VivienneWestwood in London. A "life-changing" Christmas break in 2003 to Cambodia had her reconsider her career. "I met the happy faces of kids who create these luxury clothes in abject poverty," she says. "I came back different. I couldn't go back to that desk again." 

Batacchi quit fashion and enrolled at The Florence Academy of Arts, shifting her gaze to social art. "After seven years, I had the urge to feel fabric again," she says, gradually integrating textile into her work. Recently, on receiving a grant from a reputed Italian institution, Batacchi chose to work in India. CHI curator Sumesh Sharma and colleague Zasha Colah, who had carried out a comparative study on the Banjaras of India and the Romas of Europe, back in 2012, suggested Batacchi work with the Gormatis in Mumbai. One Sunday morning a month ago, Sharma and Batacchi arrived unannounced at Ambedkar Nagar, meeting a group of Banjaras who led them to Sita maushi. "Sita's mirrorwork and embroidery are quite extraordinary. She is Ambedkar Nagar's go-to artisan," says Batacchi, who eventually collaborated with Chavan on intricate embroidery on strands that made it to the exhibit. 

Blogger Badshah Naik calls Banjara embroidery "strikingly different". In a post, dated 2010, he writes, "Featuring geometrics and eschewing the floral and animal motifs used in the majority of Indian villages, Banjara embroidery is strikingly different. The viewer's eye is drawn to bold squares, triangles, circles and irregular shapes, all delineated in brilliant contrasting colours. All Banjara embroideries are designed for a nomadic life. These are multipurpose clothing and dowry pieces, not large wall decorations like those made and used by settled village people in most Indian regions." Chair professor at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Contemporary Studies, Dr Chandrakant Puri, concurs. "The Banjaras have a unique dressing style. The women wear skirts and a short cloth drawn across the shoulders, usually red or green in colour. In the skirt border, double lines of cowries (shells) are sewn. Their blouses are embroidered and small pieces of glass are sewn into them. Strings of beads are worn around the neck. On their arms, they wear 10 or 12 bangles of ivory, lac or horn," he explains. 

Now predominantly settled in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the Banjara footprint in India is ancient. According to William Crooke in his book, The Tribes and Castes of the North Western India (1896), the first mention of the Banjaras in Muslim history was during Sikandar's attack on Dholpur in 1540 AD. Sion Koliwada resident Kiran Chavan, who belongs to one of 85 families that live in the pipe line house slum, defines his community's origins as "untraceable". The 22-year-old student of Vasantdada Patil College of Engineering, says, "Our language Gormati is similar to Marwari, because of our association with Rajasthan. Banjaras from Maharasthra are known as vanjari or inhabitants of the forest. Nobody here ever discusses our origins, though." "Originally," explains Puri, who is also Chairperson of the Indian Nomadic and De-notified Tribes Development Council, "they transported salt and grain on bullocks to distant places. In the process, they migrated to areas where business was flourishing, including Maharashtra and Mumbai." 

The newer settlements in the city, including Kalyan and Badlapur, experts see as a result of migration on account of drought in Marathwada and Vidarbha. Mainstream history, reckons Puri, written often by privileged historians, undermines the origins, life and struggle of excluded groups. With the community's kids learning local Indian languages, their dialect of Goar boli, which doesn't have a script or recorded history, is gradually fading. 

Caught in a moment of transition, Banjara culture then finds a fitting voice in Batacchi and Chavan's alliance. 

Reema Gehi for Mumbai Mirror 14 June 2015 

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/others/sunday-read/Stitch-on-the-move/articleshow/47658115.cms

Lisa Mara Batacchi  is the Winner of the award “D.E.M.O. Movin’ Up II session 2014” 

Curated by the MINISTRY OF GOODS AND CULTURAL ACTIVITIES AND TOURISM
General Direction for Landscape, Fine Arts, Architecture and Contemporary Art
General Direction for the performing arts
And GAI - Association for the Circuit of Young Italian Artists

Read more:

http://www.giovaniartisti.it/movinup/vincitori/lisa-batacchi

Zied Ben Romdhane wins the Prix PopCap 2015 at Art Basel for the Children of the Moon

13 – 25 June 2015
Hours: Open 24/7
Theaterplatz Basel 

Image Afrique is an annual photography exhibition created with the aim of redefining people’s perceptions of Africa and offering a stage for African photography. Five outstanding photographic projects from international photographers are on show at Image Afrique as part of POPCAP.  The prize consists of global exposure at major international photography exhibitions such as POPCAP exhibitions at Image Afrique in Basel, Switzerland, in cooperation with LagosPhoto Festival in Lagos, Nigeria, and at the FIFCV Festival Internacional de Fotografia de Cabo Verde. We will be inviting all winning artists to our Image Afrique Show during Art Basel, Switzerland. 

POPCAP, the piclet.org prize for contemporary African Photography is being held for the fourth time in 2015. It is directed at photographers whose work engages with the African continent and/or its diaspora. The prize consists of global exposure at major international photography exhibitions. POPCAP aims to raise the profile of African photography within the arts. Each year five winners are selected by an internationally-sourced panel of judges, enabling the promotion of African photography worldwide and helping to avoid geographically and culturally one-sided views of the portfolios. Due to its extensive application in a day-to-day context, we consider photography to be the ideal medium through which to foster an unhindered exchange of ideas about the image of Africa.

Filipe Branquinho – Interior Landscapes , Zed Nelson – South Africa – After Mandela, Tahir Carl Karmali – Jua Kali, Zied Ben Romdhane – Children of the Moon, Romaric Tisserand – Ultramar ( Empire Travel Club)

Amani (10) can only go out to play in the street after the sun has set Ariena, Tunisia

Children of the Moon

Xeroderma Pigmentosum, or XP, is a genetic disorder that affects the ability of skin cells to repair the damage done by ultraviolet (UV) light. This means that UV light can easily cause burns, cancers, and other skin malignancies. In extreme cases, those suffering from XP have to avoid exposure to even the smallest amount of sunlight, and even be wary of artificial sources of UV light— such as neon tubes and some energy-saving fluorescent lamps. The necessity of complete avoidance of sunlight has led to individuals with the disease being given the nickname in French of Les Enfants de la Lune (Children of the Moon).

Cancers caused by XP usually develop between the ages of two and ten. Without protection from the sun, a patient is 4,000 times more likely to develop skin cancer than other children. Life expectancy of those who live without protection is less than 20 years. The condition is caused by a recessive gene, which means that both parents must have the gene for XP to manifest itself in their children. A couple giving birth to one baby with XP has a 25 percent chance of having another child with the disease. The incidence of XP in newborn babies worldwide is one in every 300,000, while in Tunisia it is one in 10,000, and in some regions of the country up to one in 100. Part of the reason for this is thought to be intermarriage between cousins, which is still traditional practice in some areas. Lack of public awareness of the disease is also a contributing factor.

Zied Ben Romdhane 2014 Tunis 

    

Clark House Bombay : 'Soulmates (within time)'/ Lisa Mara Batacchi - preview.

11 June 2015 

6 - 10 pm  

\

Bull and Bird ,  5.5 inch by 7.5 inches , Krishna Reddy ; Early 1950s printed 2015 by Nikhil Raunak

Clark House Initiative A Presentation by Nikhil Raunak Tuesday, June 9, 7pm Asia Art Archive in America 43 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 $5 suggested donation Please RSVP here Clark House Initiative is a curatorial collaborative and a union of artists based in Bombay. Established in 2010 by Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma, it is located in a building that was formerly an office of pharmaceutical research, an antiques store, and the shipping office of the Thakur Shipping Company that had links to countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Japan. Curatorial interventions in the space hope to continue, differently, these histories of internationalism, experiment and research.   Please join us for a presentation by Nikhil Raunak,   ​artist member   of Clark House Initiative. He will reflect on the 'Workshop Model', a method of engaging with public and regional institutions in India. This model was developed by Clark House Initiative, with Anant Nikam at the printmaking studio of Sir JJ School of Art, and acknowledges the legacy of the workshops of the artist and pedagogue Krishna Reddy.     Nikhil Raunak (b. 1988) is a multi-discipline artist  ​ ​  who graduated in 2011 from Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay in painting and printmaking  ​. ​  Raunak is also founding member of Bombay-based artist collective 'Shunya'. Shunya, meaning 'void', is used to define a mathematical concept of nothingness. The title explains a beginning from a point of neutrality. Shunya was formed in 2012. Raunak is a recipient of Inlaks Fine Art Award 2015 and participated in numerous exhibitions including Arranging Chairs for Ai Wei Wei, ICU-Jest, Kochi-Muzirius Biennale 2012, we have arrived nowhere, Transnational Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2013, and INSERT-2014 Mati Ghar New Delhi 2014.

Copyright © 2015 Asia Art Archive in America, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you're subscribed to the newsletter of Asia Art Archive in America. Our mailing address is: Asia Art Archive in America 43 Remsen Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

First of the Clark House Krishna Reddy-Judy Blum Fellows, Nikhil Raunak will began his residency in New York this April for 3 months, during which he researche and used the studio facilities at Flux House 2. The residency is supported by Judy Blum and Krishna Reddy for young artists to come live and practice in New York. Raunak will archive Reddy's drawings and prepare a project on experimental printmaking through his interactions with Reddy. Nikhil Raunak (1988) often works with cryptic codes that critique conceptual practice in the arts, inventing languages, creating videos and drawings that all stem from his study of graphic printmaking and portraiture.  

​Bull and Bird , was a Copper Plate was made by Krishna Reddy was trying to experiment with various carving tools. The bull is accompanied by a small dead bird carved under. The plate was lost and was then returned by Reddy's student Mark Johnson who found it at the New York University and he returned it to Judy Blum and Krishna Reddy. Nikhil Raunak collaborated with Reddy to print 22 editions of line etchings from the plate which had never been published before.

 

Gulf Labor Artist Coalition

Letter from sixty+ curators, critics and museum directors to UAE art institutions, and their affiliates

June 1, 2015

To:
Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Tourism Development & Investment Company, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, NY, USA
New York University, New York, USA
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Agence France-Muséums, Paris, France
Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE

Recently, artists Ashok Sukumaran and Walid Raad were denied entry to the UAE on grounds of “security”. This comes after NYU professor Andrew Ross was similarly barred from flying to Abu Dhabi in March. Sukumaran and Raad have a long history of vital and sustained engagement with the UAE, often on the invitation of your institutions. Ross is a professor of standing in New York’s academic community. It appears that the reason these three members of our global arts and academic community were denied entry to the UAE is their involvement with the Gulf Labour Coalition.

As you know, Gulf Labour is an artist-initiated group that has been active since 2010, asking museums and institutions being built on Saadiyat Island to create better conditions for their workers. These conditions of the creation of a cultural world should be of concern to us all, and the proposals of artists in this regard should be seen as a matter of debate, not of “security”. We assert that artists and academics should be allowed free passage to conduct research and work that is done in a peaceful and productive manner.

We the undersigned oppose the barring of Ashok Sukumaran, Walid Raad and Andrew Ross from the UAE. We state that denying artists visas, stopping and deporting them after years of their work in the region, creates a chilling precedent and makes it difficult for arts and academic institutions in the UAE, and those working with the UAE to claim regional dialogue and artistic freedom. We urge your institutions to work with the concerned authorities to lift these bars on their travel.

Sincerely,

Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions, Tate Modern, London
Andrea Lissoni, Senior Curator International Art (Film), Tate Modern, London
Andrea Thal, Artistic Director, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director, Creative Time, New York
Anselm Franke, Head of Visual Art and Film, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Anton Vidokle, Founder, e-flux, New York
Bartomeu Marí, Director MACBA, Barcelona
Beatrix Ruf, Director Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, New York
Charles Esche, Director, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Charles Guarino, Publisher, Artforum Magazine, New York
Chris Dercon, Director, Tate Modern, London
Christine Van Assche, Chief Curator-at-Large, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Claire Hsu, Founder-Director, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Defne Ayas, Director, Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam
Dennis Lim, Director of Programming, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York
Doryun Chong, Chief Curator, M+ Hong Kong
Emilie Villez, Director, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris
Eva Franch, Chief Curator and Executive Director,  Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York
Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Fawwaz Traboulsi, Writer and Historian, American University of Beirut, Beirut
Franck Gautherot, Co-director Le Consortium, Dijon
Geeta Kapur, Critic and Curator, New Delhi
Glenn Lowry, Director, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Hammad Nasar, Head of Research & Programmes, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Hila Peleg, Curator, Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens
Iftikhar Dadi, Professor, Department of History of Art, Cornell University, New York
Jean-Marc Prévost, Director, Carré d’art, Nîmes
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Raqs Media Collective, New Delhi
Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Jitish Kallat, Artist and Curator, 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennial
Kate Fowle, Director-at-Large, Independent Curators International, New York
Kathy Halbreich, Deputy Director, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Koyo Kouoh, Artistic Director, RAW Material Company, Dakar
Lars Nittve, Executive Director, M+ Hong Kong
Laura Raicovich, Director, Queens Museum, New York
Lucy R. Lippard, Critic and Writer, Galisteo
Maha Maamoun, Board member, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Mai Abu El Dahab, Director, Young Arab Theatre Fund, Brussels
Mami Kataoka , Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
Maria Lind, Director, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
Marie Muracciole, Curator, Director of Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon
Marta Kuzma, Rector, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm
Nancy Adajania, Cultural theorist and independent curator, Mumbai
Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, Independent curator, editor of L’Internationale Online, Paris
Nato Thompson, Chief Curator, Creative Time, New York
Negar Azimi, Senior Editor, Bidoun, New York
Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, London
Patricia Falguieres, Professeur à l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists Association, New Delhi
Rana El Nemr, Board member, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Ranjit Hoskote, Cultural theorist and independent curator, Mumbai
Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Sebastien Delot, former Modern and Contemporary Art Curator of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Head of the Collection of The Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Saint Etienne
Seungduk Kim, Co-director Le Consortium, Dijon
Sharmini Pereira, Director, Raking Leaves, Sri Lanka
Sheena Wagstaff, Chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Solange Farkas, Director/Curator, Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Sao Paulo
Sukhdev Sandhu, Film critic and writer, New York University, New York
Sumesh Sharma and Zasha Colah, Clark House Initiative, Mumbai
Sunjung, Kim, Artistic Director, Asia Culture Information Agency of Asian Culture Complex, Gwangju
Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, Managing Trustee & Honorary Director, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai
Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Vasıf Kortun, Director of Research & Programs, SALT, Istanbul and Ankara
Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh, Vice-President, Arab Image Foundation, Beirut

http://gulflabor.org/timeline/