To create a platform for young writers, curators and researchers so that they get a hands-on experience in curating exhibitions, last year Shrine Empire had organised the Art Scribes’ Award which offered a residency programme in South Korea for the selected awardee. It was organised in collaboration with the Gwangju Metropolitan City Museum of Art, Gwangju, South Korea, as part of their Asian Curators’ Exchange Programme. Oindrilla Maity Surai, an art historian and independent curator based in Kolkata, was the first recipient of this award. Banking on her experiences, she is curating her latest exhibition—Whose History? Which Stories?—comprising videos, paintings, documentation videos and installations.
The ‘group show’ at The Stainless Gallery, New Delhi, that will continue till December 28 will feature works by five Indian and five South Korean artists “The natural human urge to connect with each other through myths, helps in identifying the patterns of thought. It is also an attempt to trace the patterns, tendencies and future moorings of visual art through its current traits,” says Oindrilla.
The exhibition doesn’t thrive on popularity and the numbers of connoisseurs who come to view it. On the contrary, it values and gains inspiration from works of other talented artists from around the world.
The works showcase varied raw talents; and Oindrilla seems pleased with the outcome. While artist SangHwa Park’s videos from the Inner Dream series portray the essential pessimism of the 21st century in the post-war world, YoungTae Kim’s photographs—often blurry, overlapping images forming collages—address memory and history. Artist ChangWon Lee’s interplay with negatives and positives of photographs remind us of another Korean artist, Noh Suntag, questioning the validity of war and freedom. Artist Siyon Jin’s video projection, Flow, carries forward Nam June Paik’s legacy, exploring technology as a means of mediating the past and the future. Gim Gwang Cheol’s videos, on the other hand, question the human situation in a sprawling city that grows oblivious of its past, its sacrifices to earn a free nation state and what it actually promised to achieve.
Indian artist Atul Bhalla’s installation, comprising 12 light boxes titled The Listener from the West Heavens, is based on his work done in Shanghai in August, 2010. Praneet Soi’s video projections, Drawing Machine, carry with them the myths associated with homecoming, nostalgia, migration and the associated anxieties of the peripherals.
Artists Gigi Scaria’s video, Amusement Park, serves up a logical extension of utopian urban romanticism. Last, but not the least, artist Tushar Joag’s pen and ink on paper works—Listening to the Sound of One Hand Clapping, Regime Change and Fluid Dynamics—address the urban myths associated with cult figures, imagination and fantasy, so much a part of the urban life—remotely portraying the crises and pressures of city life. Prajakta Palav’s painting, Please Have a Bite, is about junk food and urban consumerism. And then there are more artists whose works are sure to thrall you when you reach The Stainless Gallery on Mathura Road.