[Reader-list] Something I've been meaning to tell you >> Friday, April 15th

[Iram Ghufran]

Opening >>

Something I've been meaning to tell you

Anusha Yadav
Clare Arni
Gauri Gill
Nandini Valli Muthiah
Priya Sen
Sarindar Dhaliwal
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Sunil Gupta

Curated by Sunil Gupta and Vidya Shivadas

Preview: 15 April 2011, 6 pm

Vadehra Art Gallery
D-178 Okhla Phase I, New Delhi 110020

On view till 20 May 2011
Monday to Saturday, 11 am - 7 pm

Additional Events

16 April 2011, 7 pm
Artist Speak: Clare Arni, Nandini Valli Muthiah and Priya Sen
Moderated by Rakhee Balaram
FICA Reading Room, D-42 Defence Colony, New Delhi

28 April 2011, 6.30 pm
A Novel in Photos: An Evening with Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
ML Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Française de Delhi, 72 Lodhi Estate, New Delhi

2 May 2011, 7 pm
After Stonewall: Book release of Queer: Sunil Gupta
Authors: Keith Wallace and Saleem Kidwai
Published by Vadehra Art Gallery and Prestel
Performance by Pramada Menon and Gautam Bhan to mark the occasion.
Saleem Kidwai will also be present.
Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, 3 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi

________________________________

What’s becoming increasingly apparent from the history of Indian
photography is the preoccupation with the family portrait. The
considerable formalities of the studio portrait have given way to the
snapshot and the more intimate subject matter of art making. As the
extended family is under stress, pressure is increasing to divulge its
secrets. The multiplicity of relationships that individuals have, are
often managed by a cloak of secrecy about real and/or imaginary
feelings about siblings, parents, children and others. How and what to
reveal seems to be one of our paramount contemporary concerns.
Meanwhile society itself is changing; now more accepting of a range of
a family structures from one individual alone to same-sex families.
The title of the exhibition comes from Alice Munro, a Canadian writer
of short stories that extensively explore this sensitive and difficult
terrain.

Anusha Yadav's online ‘Indian Memory Project’ where people are asked
to upload a photo and relate the story of the relative takes the
personal archive into a contested public space. Clare Arni's extended
portrait of the Belgian woman ascetic Meera as she emerges from her
thirty year spiritual retreat spent in a cave in Hampi.  Gauri Gill's
extraordinarily evocative witness of the short life of Jannat from
rural Rajasthan- not a sociological study nor a memorial. Siddharth
Dhanvant Shanghvi's record of his father battling brain cancer, in the
words of the writer-photographer, ‘have me thinking about not only my
father’s end but also my own and how I will meet it.’

Sarindar Dhaliwal's video piece, ‘Olive, Almond and Mustard’ a
diaspora artist's reflection on the Punjabi village of her birth, the
memory of her mother's tales and the nursery rhymes of her adopted
homelands. Priya Sen's  video project 'Antecedent Garden', takes her
through a continuous museum of places and childhoods - both
simultaneously becoming signifiers of the future, as well as a
constantly changing past. Nandini Valli Muthiah's series, ‘Remembering
to Forget’ where children enact, in fancy dress, roles chosen by their
parents - a performance that for many will remain with them through
their adult years. And finally Sunil Gupta's ongoing project,
‘Country’, investigating the traces of his father's family in rural
Uttar Pradesh and its three hundred year trajectory into the modern
world.

--
Iram Ghufran

Sarai Media Lab
Sarai/ CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110057

http://www.sarai.net/practices/media-forms/city-as-studio-exb
http://www.delhicommons.net/