SYNOPSES + ARTIST BIOs

 

1.

FISH LOVE

Gayatri Kodikal

11.27

Fish Love is an interspecies love story through interstitial time. A melancholic fish who lives in the sludge at the bottom of a swamp, desires to be close to the fisherwoman who visits everyday. A tragic turn of events leaves the fish torn, a rose grows from the wounded mouth. Eons later in another dimension, a poet wanders by the swamp in the day and gets bitten by the tormented fish. Infected by a pessimistic love, he writes his first love poem. At night when the pink coloured full moon shines bright, the monk creature creates patterns on the mud, weaving together souls and elements, meditating interconnectedness. Each story is inside the other, opening up like matryoshka dolls, something left untouched during each transition. What is the gap between now and now? Free from measure, a nil void inside a gaping mouth from which the melancholic love grows as a rose in full bloom..

BIO

GAYATRI KODIKAL (b. 1984) is a contemporary research based artist offering ludic propositions – both physical and virtual, experimental film, diagrams, installation and performance. Her work delves into the aspects of play and narrative within a critical investigative practice offering explorations that traverse themes of haunting within archival documents, moments of apparition and disapparition, and the nuanced interactions between the fragmented female body and prevailing social and technological power structures that are creating the planetary habitability crisis. Psycho-geography, ecofeminism, history and oral storytelling informs her research and inquiry that has led the work often combining specific historical instances with ecologies, hauntology, “animism” and spatialized remembrances. These investigative qualities inspire speculative artworks and prompt a methodology through performance and game making. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute and has studied filmmaking with a Masters in Film and Video Communication Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Kodikal lives between the Netherlands and India.Selected exhibitions include: The Travelling Hand, Solo show at Tent, Rotterdam, 2020/2021; Have I Become Her Stories? Tent, Rotterdam, 2020/2021; Queering the City: A Sono Orientation, Twelve Cautionary Tales, Matadero Madrid, Madrid, 2020/2021; I am Sutradhar, The Gallery Guild, Mumbai, 2018.

 

2.

INTERFERENCE

Tallur L N

4:00

This slow-motion video captures the manual cleaning of a rug originally installed at a palace in Junagadh district in the Indian state of Gujarat, when being shifted to the Junagadh Museum. The ornate textile with its geometric floral pattern was initially produced in the late 1800’s by inmates imprisoned for their role as freedom fighters in the struggle for independence from colonial Great Britain. A surprising amount of dust is exhumed in this beating process creating billowing smoke-like plumes that envelop the scene, the laborers and this cultural artifact. The work alludes to the sediment of time and a release of that which is embedded underneath the surface of our dominant narrative. The sound is slightly off register with the action creating an echoing effect not unlike that of mortars discharging in the distance while the image of the dust clouds calls to mind a city under aerial bombardment (carpet bombing). This act of cleaning or cleansing creates an association to the violent and destructive conflicts in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

BIO

TALLUR uses sculpture, wall pieces, interactive work, and site-specific installations to expose the absurdities of everyday life and the anxieties that characterize contemporary society. His work incorporates handmade 2

craftsmanship, found objects, organic and industrial material; symbols of developing India, oftentimes creating a correlation between traditional and contemporary customs. Tallur’s sculptures and installations have been exhibited internationally, including at solo exhibitions in Germany, South Korea, India, China, and the United States. Selected group exhibitions include The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT7), Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2012); Critical Mass: Contemporary Art from India, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2011); Meditation: Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum, Taiwan (2011); The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, UK (2010) and La Route de la Soir, Tri Postal, France (2010).

 

3.

CHILD LOCK

Abeer Khan

2.12

Produced in COVID19 – Lockdown, the video surfs the freedom of mind. According to the artist, a child-lock is an expression that implies a lock or bodily safety, set by a child’s guardians. However the mind cannot be locked and opening one’s mental child-lock allows one to time travel, from the present to the past and into the future. The afternoons of the lockdown reminded her of childhood summers of daydreaming on fantasy scenarios and projecting these onto the walls during hot humid afternoons.

BIO

ABEER KHAN is an independent filmmaker and photographer, with work spanning documentary, narrative, brand films, and video art. Born and raised in Mumbai, she is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker. Over the years she has acquired film making skills such as production, cinematography, editing, motion graphics and sound mixing. Most of her films have emerged from her work as a one woman crew. She says that space is very crucial to her projects. She finds it immensely interesting to observe how characters function in their own spaces and how they create worlds of their own in the process. Abeer’s projects have been showcased on prestigious international platforms, with world premieres at Berlin’s Künstlerinnenhaus Mousonturm, the Kochi Biennale, and major film festivals across the UK, Canada, and India. Her work has also been featured in notable publications, including The Hindu, Midday, Bloomberg, Platform, Homegrown, Better Photography and The Wire.

 

4.

DEEPEST DEMARCATION

Hetal Chudasma

9.52

Deepest Demarcation is a performance by Hetal Chudasama reflecting on the death, loss and trauma following the lockdown. The context is the plight of migrant workers in Indian cities, who trekked to their villages without support or facilitation from the system. The work is a reflection on the bleak reality of a world where such neglect is tolerated and accommodated by wide sections of the people, the media and the state. The artist says: “A prayer is performed. A prayer born out of cacophony of shrieks in the air. A way to come to terms with unbearable loss. The loss of dignity, faith, and the right to life itself.”

BIO

HETAL CHUDASAMA is a visual artist working in a range of media. Spanning live-action, installation, text and object making, Hetal sees writing as a critical tool and performance as a conjunction point. In order to offer alternative views on realities and fiction,her artistic processes explore theatrical mechanisms of representation, performativity of language, magic and rituals. Most of her works are explorations of the language of protest – be it an individual body or political and cultural rupture faced by vulnerable members of society. As a migrant from India in the UK, she inhabits many places, stories and many different truths that play into her works.

5.

FAR FROM HOME

Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee

2.03

Sabyasachi builds vivid imaginary worlds. Far From Home takes us to an observation deck, looking out on what looks like an amusement park, but a world of nightmares unfolds. This seems to be a system of production, not entertainment. The system appears to be using human beings to produce resources for itself. At one end, heaps of exhausted bodies are being discarded, probablty to be reprocessed, an expendable part of the whole system, we realise.

BIO

SABYASACHI BHATTACHARJEE is a Visual Artist and Filmmaker from Dharmanagar, Tripura, now based in Vadodara, Gujarat. He completed his BVA in Painting at Govt. College of Arts and Crafts, Agartala, and his MVA from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. His practice revolves around documenting chaos and constructing spatial and temporal narratives through drawings, audio-visuals, and image manipulation. Sabyasachi often incorporates his own body in his work, either as himself or as a medium for fictional characters and uses scientific theories to formulate socio-political or philosophical arguments, such as the idea of cacophony and the laws of thermodynamics in a social context. He has participated in prominent residencies like Khoj Peers Residency (2019) and Pepper House Residency, KBF, Kochi (2020). He also works as a freelance Cinematographer and Film Editor, frequently collaborating with the Gujarati theatre and film group ‘Geet Theatre’, contributing to independent feature films like Kundaalu and Katlaa Curry.

 

6.

POLITICAL REALISM

Gigi Scaria

3.35

Political Realism deals with the regime shift and the change of time. Within the last thirty years a drastic change has taken place in the realms of politics, economics and culture. Using the leitmotif of a pair of neighbouring doors that open and close to reveal new vistas, Gigi Scaria points to the futility of reliance on the power structures of the past and possibly, the need to build new formations in the present. ‘Political Realism’ brings this confusion to every single home and recollects the memory of the past to analyze the impermanence of all great power structures of the present as well as many more yet to come.

BIO

GIGI SCARIA was born in southern Kerala. After completing a BFA degree at the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, Scaria moved to New Delhi where he undertook a MFA at Jamia Millia University. Since then, he has developed a cross-media practice. Scaria works across painting, photography, installation, sculpture, and video. His work explores issues of urban development, particularly in relation to migration, economic development and urban architecture. He is interested in the quality of social space in a drastically changing urban environment, with its associated implications for psychological experience. Since 2000, Scaria has exhibited widely in India, and has participated in major exhibitions and residency programs internationally including in Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Korea, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the USA.

 

7.

THE GHOST TAXONOMY

Tushar Waghela

4.57

Indian society weaves a complex matrix of inequality. While the usual divisions of caste, religion and language gradually still, income differentiation has stratified citizens into ever-expanding vertical layers. Identity and worth of an individual is marked by his income. A person moves a step above, by money power, only to find several others on top. This vortex has institutionalized income disparity as those on the lowest

steps have little space or opportunity to transcend their status. Leftovers of a sumptuous dinner may feed a family and the expenditure incurred over the meal may sustain some family for a year. The amount needed to buy one liter milk beats the official requirement to cross the poverty line. Worse, we have accepted this cruel classification as a natural consequence of growth, an unpardonable insensitivity that may create irreparable fissures in social fabric.

BIO

TUSHAR WAGHELA is a filmmaker and visual artist with a Master’s degree in Indian Philosophy. He has been working in the field of contemporary art and experimental cinema for 25 years. His video arts, installations, short films and experimental cinemas have been shown in museums, galleries, universities and in over 150 international film festivals. These include the Cannes Film Festival, London Asian Film Festival, British Film Institute, the Collectif Jeune Cinema Paris, Mumbai Film Festival, and many more.Tushar lives and works from his studio in Chhattisgarh. He is currently working on a Pop Art series called ‘Without Ticket’ using street art, spray painting and mixed media techniques.

 

8.

L FOR…

Bharati Kapadia

7.01

L FOR… explores the nuances of the word LOVE by taking us on an expedition across the letters L, O, V, E. Through text animation the different words represented by each of the four letters resonate with variegated meaning-attributes that have come to be associated with the word love within the contemporary social milieu. L FOR… is the artist’s way of countering the present day despondency pervading our social environment and creating space for joy and playfulness to reclaim their existence in our daily lives.

BIO

A multi-disciplinary artist, BHARATI KAPADIA has exhibited widely in India and abroad. Her solo performance piece titled ‘Untold Stories’ has been performed in India, Istanbul, Munich and Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her 2 video works, ‘L For…’ and ‘Playing with Danger’, have been screened internationally. She was awarded the BASE scholarship for Artistic Research//Art based Philosophy for 2017. She has presented at the conference Aesthetic and the Political in Contemporary India: Deleuzian Explorations, Mumbai, 2017. In 2019 and 2021, she co-curated VAICA festival of Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists. In November 2021 she was invited as artist participant for the international, interdisciplinary project ‘Bodies Unprotected’ curated by Dr. Sandra Noeth and hosted by Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt. Her collaborative film with Abeer Khan “How do I show the ocean space you carried inside you?” made for the finale of the festival, was screened at Mousonturm, Frankfurt in 2022.

 

9.

ISOSCELES FOREST

Sukanya Ghosh

3.00

Sukanya Ghosh creates an optical collage in this work, a loop of images dissolving into each other in a combination of animated gestures. The name echoes mathematician Richard Bellman’s 1955 Forest Problem (“What is the best path to follow in order to escape a forest of known dimensions?”) She says that “the overlapping and intermingling of images fading in and out of each other, seem to look for new propositions, following segmented routes as if seeking out the best possible path to freedom.” The images are taken from family photographs, of unknown people and places – where the artist seeks timelessness and a sense of an ‘unbound place’, to create new narratives.

BIO

SUKANYA GHOSH works across painting, photography, animation and the moving image. After a degree in 5

painting at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, Sukanya studied animation at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She has shown her work at venues including the Lianzhou Museum of Photography, Qingyuan, China; Jimei x Arles Festival, Xiamen, China; Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa and the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. She received the Charles Wallace India Trust Award; the Sarai Independent Fellowship and several other awards. Sukanya has managed the arts programmes at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Kolkata and has extensive graphic design experience. She lives and works between Delhi and Kolkata.

 

10.

WATER HAS MEMORY

Meera Devidayal

7.49

Water Has Memory is about man’s greed to gouge out more and more land from the sea in the name of ‘development’, regardless of environmental imbalances thus created. Fancy office buildings stand where the sea once was. But the planet gets its revenge in the form of tsunamis, typhoons, droughts, and earthquakes. Reflections of the sea in the windows remind us that it is ever-present, even if not visible, and can strike any time.

BIO

MEERA DEVIDAYAL graduated in English Literature from Kolkata, but took up art after coming to Mumbai in 1967. Her first exhibition was in 1975. Being essentially an urban person, her work is grounded in the plethora of images that the city throws up. For almost two decades, the idea of the city as a dream world has been central to her work. She has, for example, worked on ‘development’, ‘migration’, ‘home’, ‘commercial city structures’ Recently she has reflected on the consequences of land reclamation in the age of global warming. Her attempt has always been to turn ‘found image’ into a visual metaphor to charge it with new meaning.

 

11.

COUNTERFEIT

Babu Eshwar Prasad

2.49

Counterfeit explores the phenomena of industrialization and the kind of impressions it makes on the landscape. The digital collage and videos piece together various elements of industrial and mining landscapes. Bit by bit the accumulated forms condense together to form an ironic monument of our times: a dense arch towering over a barren landscape.

BIO

BABU ESHWAR PRASAD trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Vadodara. Prasad’s practice spans across painting, sculpture, sound, photography and film. His short films have screened at various venues and film festivals worldwide. Prasad’s feature films Gaalibeeja (Wind Seed) and Hariva Nadige Maiyella Kaalu (A running river is all legs) have screened at MAMI, Bangalore International Film Festival, 3rd South Asian Film Festival, Kochi Biennale, K21 Museum Dusseldorf, the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art and the International Documentary and Short Film Festival, Kerala

 

 

Curator Bios

BHARATI KAPADIA

A multi-disciplinary artist, BHARATI KAPADIA has exhibited widely in India and abroad. Her solo performance piece titled ‘Untold Stories’ has been performed in India, Istanbul, Munich and Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her 2 video works, ‘L For…’ and ‘Playing with Danger’, have been screened internationally. She was awarded the BASE scholarship for Artistic Research//Art based Philosophy for 2017. She has presented at the conference Aesthetic and the Political in Contemporary India: Deleuzian Explorations, Mumbai, 2017. In 2019 and 2021, she co-curated VAICA festival of Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists. In November 2021 she was invited as artist participant for the international, interdisciplinary project ‘Bodies Unprotected’ curated by Dr. Sandra Noeth and hosted by Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt. Her collaborative film with Abeer Khan “How do I show the ocean space you carried inside you?” made for the finale of the festival, was screened at Mousonturm, Frankfurt in 2022.

bharatikapadia@gmail.com / www.bharatikapadia.com

ANUJ DAGA

ANUJ is an architect, writer and curator based in Mumbai. Trained as an architect from Mumbai (2008), he went on to pursue his interests in History & Theory of Architecture at Yale .School of Architecture, Yale University (2014). His practice is informed by diverse engagements in fields of design, research and academia that have resulted into numerous roles as writer, critic, commentator, theorist or interlocutor in the cultural field. He has been the Curatorial Assistant for the visual arts project “Young Subcontinent” since first organized by Serendipity Arts Foundation in Goa in 2016 until 2018 as well as ‘When is Space? Conversations in Contemporary Architecture’ commissioned by the Jawahar Kala Kendra (2018). He was the co-curator of the online festival of Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA) during 2021. More recently, he curated the exhibition ‘The Waiting Room’ for the ICAS13 Conference in Surabaya, Indonesia as a part of the research initiative ‘Youth on the Move’ that looks at knowledge production across the Asia-Africa axis.He has keen interest in studying the processes of visual culture and meaning-making in the contemporary built environment in South Asia. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the School of Environment & Architecture, Mumbai.

anujdaga02@gmail.com / http://cargocollective.com/anujdaga