[Reader-list] Chennai Beautiful: Shifting Urban Landscapes...

[Tasveer Ghar]

Dear friends of Tasveer Ghar

In the New Year, we are happy to announce the launching of a new
visual essay on Tasveer Ghar website:

Chennai Beautiful: Shifting Urban Landscapes and the Politics of Spectacle
by Roos Gerritsen

http://www.tasveerghar.net/cmsdesk/essay/115/

This essay looks at the process of “beautification” of the south
Indian city of Chennai by a recent trend of colourful wall murals, in
a region which already famous for its loud and oversized billboards
and popular street culture.

The author Roos Gerritsen is an anthropologist whose research focuses
on popular visual culture in South India. She obtained her MA degree
in Anthropology at Leiden University, The Netherlands, and her MA
research provided insight into notions of romance and memory through a
study of wedding videos and photo albums in Tamil Nadu.

On a related note, we would like to announce an international seminar
being held in Chennai, India, next week on the theme of street art:

Urban visualities: Sites and Sights of Street Art
An international seminar, artist workshop and exhibition
January 28-30, 2011
Dakshina Chitra, Chennai

Urban visualities is a series of events consisting of an artist
workshop, international seminar, and exhibition on art and spectacle
in public places in India and beyond. It explores image circulations
in and contestations of the public realm. The types of visualities
addressed here range from cinema imagery, religious hoardings,
advertizing images to political statues and murals.
Prior to the seminar, an artist workshop will be held in which artists
from various backgrounds from India and beyond will produce several
works together. The results of the artist workshop will be exhibited
in an exhibition dedicated to the theme. The exhibition will be opened
at the start of the seminar.

The exhibition displays the work of Sundeep Bali, David Blamey, Ranjan
De, Murugan, Ramachandran, Ravikanth & Prabath Kumar (Raqs Media
Collective), Vishal Rawlley, Yousuf Saeed, Ebenezer Singh, Joyston
Vaz, and photos by Shirley Abraham & Amit Madheshiya, Roos Gerritsen,
Kiran Keswani, Joanna Kirkpatrick, and Kathryn Myers.

The opening reception of the exhibition will be on January 28 18:00 pm
at DakshinaChitra.
Everyone is welcome to join and contribute during the workshop. Please
send us an email roosgerritsen at yahoo.com or mcfindia at gmail.com, or
call 9841011785 / 9176476322.

For more details about the seminar and exhibition, please visit this link:
http://dakshinachitra.net/scripts/seminar-info.asp

Thanks

The Tasveer Ghar team

http://tasveerghar.net