The third edition of Art Stage Singapore will take place from 24-27 January 2013 at Marina Bay Sands. Galleries interested to participate can refer to the application material here. For assistance or more information, please contact applications@artstagesingapore.com or (+65) 6224 4708.

Email info@artstagesingapore.com for your copy. 2012 Catalogues cost SGD$ 20.00 excluding P + P (postage & packaging)

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Wednesday,

January 11^th, 2012            Art Stage Singapore Vernissage Reception                 6 to 10 pm

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Thursday,

January 12^th, 2012           Art Stage Singapore                                                    2 to 9 pm

Talks:

The Originality of Japanese Contemporary Art          5 pm

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Friday,

January 13^th, 2012           Art Stage Singapore                                                     2 to 9 pm

Talks:

                                               Does Southeast Asian Contemporary Art Exist?             3 pm

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Saturday,

January 14^th, 2012           Art Stage Singapore                                                    12 to 9 pm

World Hug Day @ Event Plaza, Marina Bay Sands       9 am

Talks:

                                               The Art of Bernar Vernet / Sculptures in Natural              2 pm

                                               and Urban Landscapes (Artist Talk)

                                               Contemporary Art in the Philippines                              4.30 pm

Reflection on Indonesian Contemporary Art                  7 pm

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Sunday,

January 15^th                       Art Stage Singapore                                                    12 to 6 pm

                                               Talks:

                                               Thai Contemporary Art: Present & Future                      2 pm

                                               The Contemporary Art in Asia                                    4.30 pm

YAN PEI MING (CHINA)
“Indonesian Women”, 2010-2011
DIMENSIONS: Watercolour on paper Polyptych composed of 18 sheets, 154 x 115 cm each
PRESENTED BY MASSIMO DE CARLO (MILAN, LONDON)
LOCATION: C2-04

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan Pei-Ming has lived in Dijon, France since the early 1980s.

A child of the Cultural Revolution, he became a talented propaganda painter in his teens, representing notably Chairman Mao. Yan Pei-Ming has always been interested in the concepts of individuality and anonymity. He has been one of the first Chinese artist to settle abroad and to build his career, which is of international repute for more than fifteen years. He is an artist interested in the questions of painting and in the cultural differences between Western and Eastern artistic traditions. This watercolour series was conceived and executed by the artist from some portraits of Indonesian comfort women – women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military in Japanese-occupied territories during World War II. To Yan Pei-Ming, this art work talks about the memory of our “mothers” and about the violence against women.

ADITYA NOVALI (INDONESIA)
“The Wall: Asian (Un)Real Estate Project”, 2011,
DIMENSIONS: Mixed media and integrated LED on interactive 160 rotatable
triangular tubes, 270 x 400 x 700 cm
PRESENTED BY GALERI CANNA (JAKARTA)
LOCATION: B4-02

Aditya Novali presents three works that highlighting urban problems in Asia. The work proposed as point of interest is The Wall: Asian (Un)Real Estate Project (2011), a large-scale maquette representing 160 apartment units, made out of triangular tubes constructed vertically. The tubes depict 160 miniature rooms that provide three options, one for each side of the triangular tubes. The first, a stack of bricks that could turn the maquette into a thick brick wall, the second side shows a “prison apartment” and the third side is the façade of an apartment.  Aditya Novali’s maquette for this imaginary real estate project is also furnished with a video presentation entitled The End is the Beginning (2011) and a photo presentation Postcard of Living (2011).

DO-HO SUH (KOREA)
“Specimen Series: New York City Corridor -1”, 2011
DIMENSIONS:  Polyester fabric, Variable dimensions
PRESENTED BY LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY (NEW YORK)
LOCATION: C4-01

Do-Ho Suh received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in sculpture from Yale University. Interested in the malleability of space in both its physical and metaphorical manifestations, Do Ho Suh constructs site-specific installations that question the boundaries of identity. His work explores the relation between individuality, collectivity, and anonymity. He takes on a new set of ideas in his Specimen Series, which features a new set of nylon fabric household objects found in his own home. The series explores “perception of our surroundings and how one is able to construct memory from a space.”

BERNAR VERNET (FRANCE)

“GRIB 1”, 2011
DIMENSIONS: Torch-cut waxed steel, 245 x 310 x 3.5 cm

PRESENTED BY DE SARTHE GALLERY (HONG KONG)
LOCATION: C6-04

Bernar Venet is considered one of the most important figures on the international arts scene. In 1966, Venet established himself in New York where he became acquainted with artists like Donald Juddand Frank Stella . Over the course of the next four decades he explored painting, poetry, film, and performance, and was attracted, in particular, to pure science as a subject for art. The year 1979 marked a turning point in Venet’s career, when he began a series of wood reliefs, Arcs, Angles, Straight Lines, and created the first of his Indeterminate Lines. At Art Stage Singapore 2012 a series of wall reliefs called “GRIBS” which are an extension of the first wood undetermined lines in the form of relief that he created between 1979 and 1983 will be shown. They have been cut in steel plates of 35mm. This new technique, in addition to the uncontrolled nature of the “scribbles” is more brutal, less elegant and seductive than the reliefs that the artist has done earlier.

ZHANG HUAN (CHINA)

“ PAINTINGS OF SAGE’S TRACES NO.1”, 2011.

DIMENSIONS: 2.8M X 7.8M

PRESENTED BY PEARL LAM GALLERIES (SHANGHAI)

LOCATION: PA-C04

 Zhang Huan (1965 Henan) is one of China’s best-known performance and conceptual artists famous for his awe-inspiring photographs and images. Based on his personal collection of old photographs and official propaganda publications, these paintings were made from incense ash collected from Buddhist temples.  His paintings are moving meditations on themes of social history, spiritual aspiration and daily life. Zhang uses this unique and poetic media as an embodiment of the collective spirit and aspirations of the People of China, a spiritual way to transcend history and create a more precise overview of the past.

CHEN ZHEN (CHINA)

“DAILY INCANTATIONS”, 1996

DIMENSIONS: 2.3M x 7M x 3.5M

PRESENTED BY DE SARTHE GALLERY (HONG KONG) 

LOCATION: PA-C05

Chinese artist Chen Zhen was one of the country’s first major installation artists. Trained in Shanghai and Paris, he began creating stunning projects made from everyday objects like beds, cots, mattresses, bowls and other things. Best known for his Taoist meditations on life, he experimented with ideas that questioned the relationship between man and his surrounding objects. Even though he passed away in 2000 after a long bout with cancer, his work lives on. “Daily Incantations” was a sculptural installation inspired by his personal experience in Shanghai during the period of the Cultural Revolution. Made from 101 nightstools (Chinese chamber pots) that the artist and his friends purchased on the streets of Shanghai, the nightstools are suspended from a large structure reminiscent of an ancient Chinese instrument. In its centre is a large globe completely covered with old radios, televisions, telephones, and other debris of electronic communication. All the while, sounds of Chinese women ritually cleaning can be heard from speakers within the work.

LUXURY LOGICO (TAIWAN)

“SWIMMING”

DIMENSIONS: VARIABLE

PRESENTED BY MOT/ARTS (TAIPEI) 

LOCATION: B1-10

 Luxury Logico is comprised of four contemporary artists born in the 1980s: Chih-chien Chen, Llunc Lin, Kenghau Chang, Geng-hwa Chang. Known for their light-hearted style they are inspired by the natural environment, tackling thoughts and ideas that fill the spectacles of contemporary society, integrating modern technology and cultivation of humanities, and representing their ideas via music, visuality, installation, and text. Their fantastical works come in various forms and genres, including drama, movies, dance, architecture, pop music and economic behaviour.  This particular installation, “Swimming” is from the exhibition “Dot. Dot. Dot.” and was derived from the motion of the metronome. It depicts the regular and repetitive pattern of a rhythmic motion that is composed of three beats – each further divided into three parts.

ISAAC JULIEN (UK)

“YISHAN ISLAND, LONG MARCH (TEN THOUSAND WAVES)”, 2010

ENDURA ULTRA PHOTOGRAPH
DIMENSIONS: 1.8M X 2.4M

PRESENTED BY VICTORIA MIRO (LONDON)

LOCATION: C4-05

St Martin’s School of Art alum Isaac Julien, was born in 1960 in London and is an internationally known filmmaker and artist. He founded the Sankofa Film and Video Collective (1983-1992) and was a founding member of Normal Films in 1991. The critically-acclaimed Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001 for his films The Long Road to Mazatian (1999) and Vagabondia (2000), which were both made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos. He was was also the recipient of both the prestigious MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award (2002). Much of his work centres around issues of class, sexuality, and artistic and cultural history.

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CHEN WENLING (CHINA)

“RED BOY” SERIES

DIMENSIONS: 2.05M x 2.15M x 6.6M

PRESENTED BY ODE TO ART CONTEMPORARY (SINGAPORE, KUALA LUMPUR)

LOCATION: D4-05

Chen Wenling is recognised as one of the top ten contemporary sculptors in China today.

Born in 1969 in Anxi, a small, remote village in Fujian province, China, Chen came from humble beginnings but went on to study at the Xiamen Academy of Art and Design, and then later at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The two main themes of Chen Wenling’s sculptures are the manifestations of extreme humanity and immaterial images in a consumptive society. Samples of his self extreme condition begins with the series of “Red Boy” (some of the pieces from these series are over 6m long), which an autobiographic work. In terms of artistic language, Chen’s recent artworks are closer to a type of surrealistic legendary language structure, like people are riding on pigs as if they were riding pre-historic mammals. Form experience is always a crucial part in Chen’s sculpture practice, so his recent works are more like an art experiment in artistic language.

WANG QINGSONG (CHINA)

PRESENTED BY LDX CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE (BEIJING, HONG KONG)

LOCATION: C6-02

“TEMPLE” , 2011

DIMENSIONS: 1.8M X 3M

 “TEMPORARY WARD”, 2008

DIMENSIONS: 1.7M X 3M

One of China’s most highly regarded contemporary artists, Wang Qingsong was trained as a painter at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art. He moved from painting to conceptual photography and film in the 1990s and his work has been described as from darkly humorous to having an acerbic vision of Chinese society. The international art community has quickly taken note of his signature sophisticated wit and humour, which is strongly evident in his work. His elaborate large-scale photography scenes often times involve dozens of models on enormous stages and make reference to classic and modern Chinese art.

 RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA (THAILAND)

“UNTITLED 2008-2011 (THE MAP OF THE LAND OF FEELING)

DIMENSIONS: 0.91M X 25.6M
PRESENTED BY IKKAN ART GALLERY (SINGAPORE)

LOCATION: PA-A04

The internationally-renowned New York-based artist Rirkrit Tiravanija was born to Thai parents (his father was a diplomat) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has lived in cities all over the world. This painting is the chronicle of Tiravanija’s last 20 years, and took him over three years to complete (the painting was finished in April 2011). It features reproductions of the artist’s passport pages that span two decades from 1988 to 2008 covering places he had visited, seen and experienced. The project is a three-part scroll, 0.91m (3ft) high and totaling 25.6M (84ft) in length, utilising a combination of techniques including screenprint, offset lithography, and inkjet print. The passports run as a central band through each of the three scrolls and underlay or overlap an assortment of images including: City maps, archaeological and architectural sites, mazes, time zones, illustrations of urban flow, notebook pages and recipes.

 NEO RAUCH (GERMANY)

PRESENTED BY GALERIE EIGEN + ART (LEIPZIG,. BERLIN)

LOCATION: D3-01

Influenced by social realism, Neo Rauch is one of the most influential artists of his generation. Over the last quarter century, he has emerged as one of the key individuals in the resurgence of German figurative painting. Rauch studied at the Leipzig University of Graphics and Book art with Arno Rink and has been an honorary professor there since 2009. His paintings often reflect a cross between his personal history and the politics of industrial alienation. He lives in Leipzig, Germany, and works as the principal artist of the new Leipzig School.

By Arvind Vijaymohan*
Fueled by the drastic changesin India’s socio-economic and political landscape in the 80s, a unique visual expression emerged in the form of the Indian contemporary art movement. Till today, the exploration of the individual and the collective amidst a backdrop of India’s current socio-economic affairs continues to have a strong presence in the works of Indian contemporary artists.

Subodh Gupta
Hungry God
Installation 2005
Stainless steel utensils
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of Gallery Nature Morte

Overview of present-day situation
Indian modern-day art is primarily classified into two periods: the modern and the contemporary. The modern movement emerged following India’s independence in 1947, though it had taken roots a few years prior to it. Its origin was marked by a period of uninhibited freedom of creative expression which witnessed the formation of a number of  artist groups and associations. The general mandate of these groups was to redefine the visual language, as it had existed under the British rule in pre-independent India. The most prominent initiative of this period was the Bombay Progressive Artist’s Group that was founded by F. N. Souza in 1947, and its members over the years, till it’s dissolution in 1956 included S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna, Tyeb Mehta and V. S. Gaitonde – some of the mostpowerful exponents of Indian modernism. Some of the other leading modernists include Bhupen Khakhar, J Swaminathan, Jehangir Sabavala, Jogen Chowdhury, K. G. Subramanyan, Manjit Bawa and Ram Kumar.

The origin of the contemporary Indian art movement can be traced to the late 1980s. This period witnessed an emergence of younger talent that was motivated by a stream of concerns that were far removed from those of the modernists. In the decade leading up to the turn of the millennium, India witnessed a monumental ascent in its economic and technological sectors, which further led to a significant shift in its social and political fabric. The liberalization of the Indian economy in the early 90s, followed by a proliferation of popular mainstream culture played a major catalyst, fueling the imagination of the contemporaries and in their developing a unique visual expression. Adding a higher dimension to the fresh, edgy content was the artists’ inclination towards employing a wide array of hitherto unexplored mediums including performance, installation, conceptual, video and new media art.

Who’s who in Contemporary Indian art?
Alwar Balasubramaniam (1971)
The poetic dialogue between shadow, form and perspective plays an integral role in Balasubramaniam’s works. His installations, in spite of occupying a defined form tend to transcend their physicality on account of this subtle and delicate interplay. The most powerful aspect of Bala’s work is its innate, illusionary ability to lead the viewer to question identity and the concept of self, and its role in minutiae as well as the macrocosmic.

Anita Dube (1958)
Exploring the concept of loss and renewal, both at an individual and collective level, Dube’s installations use a wide selection of media ranging from plastic, ceramic eyes, human bones, wire, velvet, thread and dentures. She has over the last two decades created a deeply personal language, rendered powerfully using found objects and sculptural installations to study and represent the biased position of individuals, particularly women.
Atul Dodiya (1959) One of the archetypal Indian contemporaries, Dodiya’s practice has included hyperrealist paintings on canvas, installations, delicate watercolors and ‘combines’, works which assimilate his painting alongside, or on the surface of the installations itself – most popularly in the form of his ‘metal roller-shutter’ works. This sought-after medium enables Dodiya to present a dual-layered message; one that a viewer notices at first glance, and the second on an underlying surface that is revealed when the shutter is raised. He also suffuses humor, subtly as well as in a brazen manner within his narrative. Dodiya adopts a flight from reality within his works, creating at times fascinating parallel histories, richly strewn with imagined encounters between iconic figures from world art, politics and popular culture.

Bharti Kher (1969)
While a parcel of Kher’s practice, specifically her bindi-works on flat surfaces does not necessarily present a definitive message, her installations address concerns encompassing hybridity, identity, social norms and conditioning, evolution and tradition. The bindi, a decorative dot worn traditionally by married women on the forehead, has become a somewhat constant medium of Kher’s choice. She has created highly vibrant, large-format pictures by off-setting and intermingling bindis of multiple hues and shapes, in formations of swirls, circles, geometric as well as in a seemingly random order. Her most iconic works are life-scale sculptures including amongst others an elephant keeling over; the heart of a whale; an antlered, undressed Amazonian beauty; a snarling hyena; a fallen wishing tree; all of which reflect upon the complexities of reality, imagined as well as factual along side that of identity, personal and collective.

Dayanita Singh (1961)
Amongst India’s most prominent photographers, Singh’s work, predominantly in black-andwhite has captured candid as well as staged portraits of hundreds of Indian families from the urbane, upper strata; in the process creating not solely a profoundly moving visual archive of generations of a family in the same frame but that of them juxtaposed against the spaces they inhabit. She forayed into the domain of shooting in colour relatively recently, and this fresh body of work captured industrial spaces and buildings.

Jitish Kallat (1974)
One of the most articulate artists of his generation, Kallat plays an ambassadorial role representing the face of contemporary Indian art across the world art scene. His vision has been represented, typically in large-scale dimensions, across a broad range of media including installations, paintings, photographs, lenticular prints and video art. Mumbai, the city he lives and works in is a constant leitmotif, with its people, culture, architecture and materials playing protagonist – reflecting the aspirations, contradictions, agony, acceptance, resilience and joy of the oft-battered city and its residents, sometimes singularly as also in a teeming mass. His visually striking works present a fascinating narrative, that of marginalized vagrants, hybridized mech-animals, mutated in a Transformers-like shell; who despite their apparent unattractiveness are hard not to be drawn towards, primarily on account of their glossy, super-sleek presentation.

N. S. Harsha (1969)
A winner of the 2008 Artes Mundi Prize, Harsha’s realistic, detailed paintings and watercolours are stylistically reminiscent of traditional miniatures, though presented on an incomparably larger scale. His works feature multiple characters, collectively participating in a narrative that could cover social, political or economic commentary. Within the boundaries of his work, Harsha can deftly connect unrelated subjects, in order to highlight the apparent irony in the state of current socio-economic affairs, with singularly specific interest in India and its people. His practice has also included site-specific installations as well as ambitious group participative projects.

Ranbir Kaleka (1953)
A unique, masterly ability to juxtapose and fuse the age-old painterly tradition with the
contemporary medium of motional video imagery is what makes Kaleka’s practice so highly regarded. His trans-media works in particular reflect the artist’s concern for precision. A painted surface is introduced to a series of projected images, en route rendering a third dimension which magically breathes life into the painted characters, completely mesmerizing the viewer in the process. His practice has included detailed surrealistic paintings and dream-scaped digital collages that combine the quotidian with the fantastical.

Riyas Komu (1971)
An artist with a strong political perspective, Komu’s practice employs painting, photography and sculpture to build the visual of a complex and contrarian case against the popular perceived image of India. Supporting the commoner, in some cases read as the downtrodden, Komu’s work draws attention to the existing socio-economic extremities in the country. The alarming, inherent contradictions are brought to the fore through his recurring subjects which include portraits of individuals, rendered in a claustrophobic close-up and the motif of footballers who are emblematic of the rigors and joy of life itself – weathering victory and loss, success and failure, all in the same wave.

Sheba Chachi (1958)
Sheba Chhachhi works with lens based images, both still and moving, investigating questions of gender, ecology, violence and visual culture. Her works address the question of transformation, personal and collective memory, retrieving the marginal, and the play between the mythic and social. A long time chronicler of the women’s movement in India, as both photographer and activist, she began developing collaborative, staged photographic portraits with her subjects in the early 90’s. In her large installations, Chhachhi places the photographic image in space with video, sound, light, objects, and text. She has developed a new artistic language, that of the moving image light box, which uses a series of still and moving layers of photographic images to almost cinematic effect. Public art interventions are an important part of Chhachhi’s practice. She creates immersive installations and interactive video experiences in diverse public spaces.

Shilpa Gupta (1976)
An inter-disciplinary artist, Shilpa employs a wide range of media including photographs, interactive video, sound, websites, performances and objects to explore globally valid concerns including security, religion, politics, borders and boundaries, culture and human rights. The scale of her works can range from immersive, wherein the viewer plays an integral, interactive function in completing the piece, to far more intimate objects which may strike a viewer for their whimsy sheen yet effect them deeply on grounds of their pertinent context.

Subodh Gupta (1964)
The power of Gupta’s practice lies in his apparent ease in creating attractive yet meaningful installations, using a wholly commonplace media, which despite its ubiquity is powerfully transformed when viewed in capacity of an art-object. Though Gupta’s works are typically defined by a strong Indian sub-text, they yet are globally valid and relevant idioms. In addition, his Duchampian inclination towards ‘readymades’, typically drawn from the most humble Indian settings which address concerns of a socio-economic and political nature have significantly strengthened his position in the critical as well as popular connoisseurship circle. Beyond installations, his practice has included painting, photography, performance and video.

Sudharshan Shetty (1961)
Though Shetty’s practice has included paintings, video and performance, his most definitive works are large-scale installations of a kinetic nature. Though seemingly playful on initial glance, these works have an underlying, introspective context that could address a wide range concerns ranging from sadness to darkness to denial. He has a natural ability to transform inanimate objects into metaphors, in part by using the very element which a viewer finds interesting to begin with: the monotonous, repetitious machinations and sound of the objects; as also by juxtaposing two seemingly discordant forms, with their respective physicality: picture a monumental, steel-frame dinosaur making love to a vintage Jaguar car; a leader on the verge of toppling from his pedestal, tethered in place by a coin-collecting receptacle; a packed display cabinet, with the shelved objects bleeding, as though for the benefit of the viewer.

L.N. Tallur (1971)
Presenting an earnest rendition of a deprived, impoverished rural India through his ambitious sculptural pieces, Tallur stands out as a rare artist for having successfully parlayed India’s socio-cultural concerns and milieu into the larger stream of contemporary art. His work, derived from a deep-rooted personal context refers to the richly diverse, traditional life of agrarian communities in rural India. The juxtaposition of elements, seemingly contradictory that raise pertinent concerns of a global order form an integral part of his practice.

T. V. Santhosh (1968)
Originally trained in sculpture, Santhosh’s practice largely comprises paintings that present imagery pertaining to polemic content including terrorism and war with the visuals derived from general media sources, specifically news-channel footage. Disturbing images of terrorists, army generals, assembled religious gatherings and mutilated, maimed figures amongst others are presented by the artist in an extremely attractive, solarized palette of yellow, green, purple and orange, thereby thoroughly diffusing the initial reaction of the viewer, which logically should be that of a grimace. Instead, the viewer finds himself drawn to the work on account of its visual beauty, largely unconcerned at this stage about the underlying content.

Emerging artists

• Aditya Pande
• Chitra Ganesh
• Kiran Subbaiah
• Minam Apang
• Neha Choksi
• Nikhil Chopra
• Remen Chopra
• Rohini Devasher
• Sakshi Gupta
• Shreyas Karle
• Vibha Galhotra
• Varunika Saraf

Diaspora art
The importance of diaspora art, essentially referring to work created by artists based around the globe whose roots can be traced to India. In most cases, diaspora artists were relocated internationally at a very young age, or were born overseas. Their visual language is a unique amalgamation of Indian values and aesthetics, based upon their contemporary international environment and upbringing. Their work addresses a wide gamut of social, religious, genderbased and political concerns covering personal identity, inheritance, dislocation, cultural complexities and hybridity and the powerful role played by memory. The flux of tradition and modernity is apparent in their work that covers a range of media including painting, installations and sculpture, photography, digital and video art. Anish Kapoor and Raqib Shaw are amongst the leading diaspora artists, while others include Gautam Kansara, Rina Banerjee, the Singh Twins and Chitra Ganesh amongst others.

Private institutions in India
The lack of public art institutions within the Indian domain has been a long-standing concern, but over the last 5 years, the emergence of private museums seems to have alleviated the situation to a great extent. Similar projects and initiatives in various cities including Kolkata, Fort Kochi and Coimbatore are suggestive of a fast widening template of public level art initiatives.

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
This museum houses the personal collection of Mrs. Kiran Nadar of the HCL family, comprising over 300 works by an eclectic mix of modernists, contemporaries and emerging talent. The selection on display capably represents the essential visual trajectories in the history of post-independence Indian art; one can view signature works by all the leading artists including Husain, Souza, Rameshwar Broota, Raqib Shaw, Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Sudhir Patwardhan, Anish Kapoor, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Alwar Balasubramaniam and Ranjani Shettar among others.

The Devi Art Foundation
India’s first private contemporary art museum, the Devi Art Foundation was opened as a two store exhibition space in 2008 by mother and son duo, Lekha and Anupam Poddar. The Poddar collection is home to over 5,000 pieces of Indian tribal, folk, modernist and contemporary art. Amongst the primary objectives of the Foundation is to create a platform which fosters meaningful interactions between artists in the subcontinent so as to elevate the understanding of a common history, while simultaneously facilitating the public engagement with art. In the period since its inception, the foundation has mounted 7 exhibitions, addressing a diverse range of concerns representing artists from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka amongst others.

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
The oldest museum in Mumbai, this beautifully restored institution showcases a fine and decorative arts collection including dioramas that document the culture of different communities in the city in the 19th and early 20th century. It has, in the recent years, proven to be the perfect foil for a series of contemporary exhibitions. The juxtaposition of contemporary works by Sudarshan Shetty, Jitish Kallat and recently, Sheba Chachi against the painstakingly restored interiors of the Museum has resulted in exhibitions of a genuinely world-class caliber.

KHOJ
A part of the Triangle Arts Trust, the Khoj International Artists’ Association was started in 1997. It is an artist-led, alternative space meant to promote experimentation and cross-cultural exchange initiatives within India, apart from developing forms of art including performance, video, environmental, public and sound. Since its inception, its residencies have included multi-disciplinary artists from over 20 countries who have worked alongside Indian peers, leading to a rich cross-pollination of thoughts and ideas.

*The author is a leading Indian art advisor and has significant experience in building comprehensive collections of Indian art. He specializes in sourcing, negotiating and acquiring museumstandard modernist and contemporary Indian artworks and objects.