As Covid-19 rages on, contemporary art events continue to cancel their physical editions and launch digital platforms. Art Basel first set the trend, cancelling its Basel, Hong Kong, Miami Beach physical editions, and unveiled OVR (Online Viewing Rooms) with in-booth chat feature for visitors and exhibitors.
Frieze New York Viewing rooms reported record sales, but for the first time, it will forgo the original venue of Randall Island to the much smaller one, The Shed, for the 2021 edition. Last week, Fine Arts Paris, Art Cologne and Cologne Fine Art & Design cancelled their November fairs after France and Germany went into four-week lockdowns following the second-wave of the pandemic.
Caught in these altered plans are scores of galleries, artists, curators, who have paid advanced booth fees, created fresh works, fixed their shipping/packaging costs, manpower, travel expenses, etc. The Indian art scene must have felt it when Kochi-Murizis Biennale postponed its fifth edition to December 12, 2021.
Among those experiencing these developments are Myna Mukherjee of EnGendered – the transnational arts and human rights collective from New Delhi’s Shahpur Jat with roots in New York, and Davide Quadrio, China-based producer and curator. Both were invited by Ilaria Bonacossa, Director of Artissima – Italy’s oldest contemporary art fair – to curate Art Hub India. ‘The Hub’ was a segment started last year by Artissima and Fondazione Torino Musei ideated to highlight South Asian artistic practices.
This edition was the next big Indian art showcase on Italian soil after the ‘Indian Highway’ exhibition at Rome’s MAXXI museum in 2011-12 involving 30 artists, 60 artworks; and certainly bigger the India display at Venice Biennale 2019, ‘May You Live in Interesting Times.’ Here, Mukherjee and Quadrio were given 100 sqms of in-booth space to showcase physical artworks formats, and had worked out the shipping, transportation and temporary staff costs with their institutional sponsor, Emami Art that had amounted to EUR 18,000 plus VAT if applicable.
Then mid-October, due to the increasing Covid cases, international travel restrictions, Artissima rejigged its format for a more intimate structure as Artissima Unplugged with the highlight being the cross-media platform – Artissima XYZ, starting today, November 3.
The proposition to partake in this digital setup, in the spirit of the show must go on, was exciting, but, Mukherjee and Quadrio postponed the project to the 2021 edition. Mukherjee says the organisers didn’t have a clear vision for the digital version, and to successfully pull off a solid web space that stitches the 125 participating galleries in a seamless, uniform display, would alone require minimum three months. “We didn’t want our first foray into Europe to be static representations in an online viewing room of images sent last minute…there’s a lot of Zoom fatigue already.”
Instead, EnGendered will work on a precursor to the 2021 physical edition. “We will visit the studios of contemporary artists in India and Italy with our camera teams. This travel-culture-art project will take us two full months of travelling, filming, and editing. We need this kind of time to be imaginative so what we create really draws the people into culture and art of South Asia,” says Mukherjee.
Mukherjee and Quadrio had already selected eight galleries – Nature Morte, Vadehra Art Gallery, Shrine Empire, Latitude 28, Tarq, Gallery Espace, Experimenter Gallery and Emami Art. The artist line-up includes Bharti Kher, Prasanta Sahu, Sudipta Das, Bose Krishnamachari, as well as two AI projects by Raghava KK and Karthik Kalyanaraman from 64/1. “These works are about taking chances, and most have never been viewed in Europe, so it will be exciting! We have had incredible masters, but we also have newer, fantastic work.” Quadrio, who has collaborated with Artissima for 10 years on various special projects pertaining to art and architecture of South Asia, maintains a scholarly approach to the history, art and architecture of South Asia, says, “Art fairs like this, which are collaborations between commercial and cultural institutions, rather rituals or symbolic gestures against the fear, prejudice, ignorance and superficiality… are needed to get through these hard times.”
Even participating artists like Sudipta Das are to some extent relieved about delay. Since the last two months, Das, 34, was racing against time to complete 500 miniature dolls for a mass exodus that is typical to her oeuvre; last seen at her exhibition at Latitude 28, Lado Sarai, that was cut short by the lockdown. Das’ exodus for Artissima would focus on plight of the migrants and their blistered soles to the resolute anti CAA-NRC protestors despite the violent brush-ins, and the general hopelessness brought upon by Covid-19.
But Das could only finish 90 dolls by the stipulated deadline. The Korean dorjee doll-making technique she employs requires layering each doll with rice and hanji paper. Each doll had to be wrapped, interlocked, and the vaccum spots in-between filled with thermocol balls to prevent the tiny fingers and feet from breaking. The postponement thus is a blessing. “It is always good to get more time, and also disappointing when a show gets postponed,” she says, adding, “Now, I have time to articulate every doll and create a machete to perfect the display.”