Wednesday 7 December 2011
Wednesday 12 October 2011
ART IN REVIEW; 'In Black and White'
Admit One Gallery
529 West 20th Street
Chelsea
Through Nov. 6
This selection of photography, subtitled ''What Has Independence Meant for Women in India?,'' is a slimmed-down edition of a show that appeared in Bombay and is sponsored in New York by an activist group called Sakhi for South Asian Women. (Sakhi is a term for a female friend or confidante.) Consciousness-raising is the intention, photo-documentary the prevailing style. Most of the participants live and work in India.
The work is arranged under broad thematic headings -- birth, religion and so on -- and veers between two worlds, one modern, the other deeply traditional and conservative. Some of the pictures tell heartbreaking stories: Zana Briski's shot of an infant girl lying abandoned in a hospital bed, Krishna Murari Kishan's view of the aftermath of a police rape, Sheba Chhachhi's record of a street march led by a mother protesting the dowry murder of her daughter.
Others seem to be more benign: views of fashion models in training caught by Rajesh Vora; Saibal Das's sequence of a bride leaving her parents' Calcutta home, Sheena Sippy's images of women taking part in self-help workshops, Pamela Singh's shots of dashing-looking Air Force pilots playing billiards.
It would be good to see any of these artists in more depth, and solo shows by outstanding figures like Ms. Chhachhi, Ms. Singh and Satish Sharma are overdue. Hopefully, Admit One Gallery, which opened last season and is one of a handful of Manhattan venues devoted to contemporary art from India (others are A Gallery in Chelsea and Bose Pacia in SoHo) will meet the demand. HOLLAND COTTER
Tuesday 27 September 2011
Words & ideologies
“I like to read, but reading a city is much more interesting than reading a book. This is what inspired the compilation”, says Sharma. Words are unknowingly driving our city lives. Advertisements, information, directions, texts play a big role in the ever-modernising global life. Photographer Sharma believes that globalisation is creating a single universal culture which may be destructive in that the cultural variation and diversity present globally is lost. His photographs are a symbolism of such ideologies. One of such photos shows the statue of Gautam Buddha, in all its cultural mightiness but with an advertisement of MasterCard in the same view. Another of his snapshots shows a school in the valley with the words “English Speaking Zone”, “Pepsi”, “Admission Open” and a kulfi-wala with his “Lovely Kulfi” cart, all in the same frame. The photographer says how the words Lovely Kufli written both in Nepali and English echoes his understanding of unified cultural dynamics.
From wordings on t-shirts to shops, advertisement boards and religious gears, Texts and the City provides the onlooker a unique view on globalisation and in the artists’ words, “The texts create a subtext and in large a meta-text of modernity is shaped.” Many of the snapshots are also satiric and ironic in terms of the texts written and the images represented. Images from Kathmandu, Delhi and Australia are included in the collection.
A total of forty six images are on display at the Siddartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal. Also on sale, the pictures range from 15,000-30,000 according to their sizes.
The exhibition will be open till Oct. 17.v
Wednesday 21 September 2011
text panel for my exhibition
Tuesday 20 September 2011
The creation of the first Cities and the invention of Writing lie at the roots of our very idea of Civilization. They began together and neither now exists without the other. Especially in our modern, market driven, metropolises. Metropolises that, this year, will be home to a record breaking number of citywallahs . Citywallahs who will out number their country cousins, for the first time in human history.
And for us history making citywallahs there is no getting away from the torrents of Texts that are the drivers of our urban, market driven and increasingly destructive duniya. Texts that are targeting us with a continuous volley of visual information. Information that is encapsulated by, or packaged around, the most powerful visual language ever invented. Photography ! Or rather, to be more specific, Photography as “Eye Candy” flowing, in different photographic avtars, from the black barrels of lenses. Barrels that are more powerful than barrels of Mao’s guns.
It is these Eyeball grabbing photographic texts and their relationships with the construction and control of our selves and our consumer oriented cities that interests me. Pics are, after all, the rectangular visual bricks that actually construct our social and political landscape.
The image saturated cityscape we now live in cultivates a world view that has a clear hegemonic agenda. It is an image laden mediascape that mediates and manufactures political, cultural and commercial, power. Its texts are loaded with subtexts. Sub texts that reinforce a dominant way of seeing. A way of seeing that increasingly negates other ways of looking.. The iconic Decisive Moment (a la Henri Cartier Bresson) in photography, for example, has become a canonical metatext that precludes other ways of photographically seeing and shooting the street. And “seeing,” another Henri (Mattise, this time) reminds us,” is already a creative process. One that demands an effort”.
An effort that we have to make - to see and to unsee the seeing thrust down our eyeballs. See the spectacle for what it is. Images with messages creating a cultural landscape of desires and promoting a consuming culture of Greed. Greed over Need. Greed that our planet canno longer afford.
As Mahatama Gandhi said, “there is enough in the world for everyone’s needs. Not for everyone’s greeds” .
That is a lesson our cities have to learn. Fast. We have to learn to be questioning citizens and not be just image driven Consumers.
SATISH SHARMA
Friday 16 September 2011
politics of representation - front page Republica
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