I am Sutradhar / Archana Hande @ Alibaug

The above images are works of Manasi Bhatt from the show 'I Am Sutradhar' conceptualized by Archana Hande together with artists Sachin Kondhalkar, Gayatri Kodikal and Mansi Bhatt. The project was installed at the Guild Gallery, Alibaug. It was one of my favourite installations amongst all others, for its subtle surreal quality. It alludes the cultivation of body parts for a variety of consumptive purposes. One sees hair, skin, noses, eyes, fingers in different shapes and sizes for different needs grown in the kitchen garden of a house in alibaug along with other vegetables. The works need to be nurtured, cared and cured for those to whom it may deem fit. On one hand the relationship between body and burial are inversed whereas on the other, the reality and artificiality of life are simultaneously invoked. 

In its installation, several themes of performance, cultivation of the body, appearance, issues of race, colour, biology, growth and debates around life get invariably enmeshed. The different body organs are left overs from the artist's earlier performances within which she alters her body through the application of artificial skins, membranes that are given characteristics of human flesh through artificial solutions like latex or silicon. These chemicals have lately come to embody a lot of new age machinic bodies that are made to not simply think like humans, but also appear like the species. Thus, artificial intelligence fed into machines are enveloped into human skins through such processes. The experiments of creating life artificially, through non reproductive logics have been of modern scientific interest for some time now. The construction of tissues, cells, skins and organs are said to lend new life for those in medical need. We must all remember the successful demonstration of Dolly sheep through cloning human cell growth during mid '90s - one of the first experiments on developing a mammal bio-technologically. Subsequently, several experiments were undertaken to (re)produce several mammals from history and the present.

While cloning has continued to remain a scientific pursuit (posing much debate for humanity itself), there are several other aspects that seem to be in proximity of such thinking. The face is the most cultured part of the human body, and in recent times, certain standard ideas of "perfect" beauty has been mobilized within all cultures to push people to take steps to transform their biological selves. Cosmetic surgeries have only seen a rise in the last few decades towards achieving this universalised ideals of beauty by women, and men. Beauty products, skin lightening products, fairness creams - that showed a rise in consumption over the '90s became ways in which people imagined to appropriate the benefits of racial superiority. Only recently, has serious concern been drawn to such induced attitudes and misplaced aspirations. In such a background, Mansi Bhatt's cultivation of organs in the frontyard of the farmhouse in Alibaug begs a deeper discussion. Can we harvest our own body parts and also have the means to alter ourselves? Is it possible to choose one's skin colour, or body type? How has media influenced our sense of beauty, how has it lead to the fragmentation of the physical self, and thereby the mental self? These are questions that grow in Mansi's field of thoughts.

The human hair growing from the ground is one of the most subtle, yet compelling aspects of the installation. In the overall scheme of "organ" farming, it seems the most palpable because of its allusion to grass. In assuming its utility, it makes us wonder about the men (and women?) concerned with premature hairfall and balding (even due to medications), for whom, wigs, transplants and other kinds of treatments may be temporary or permanent solutions for fixing their social image. For many public figures who have significantly shaped the imagination of personal appearance in the sphere of everyday, such makeovers are compulsive, and even naturalised. Such adaptations defy natural course of body growth, and embrace a reality frozen over the projected social space. In the bio-technologised world of vegetal growth, could the cultivation of "organic" farming of body-parts produce a new pattern of consumption? But artistically considered, the hair growth makes us wonder if earth itself is bald! 

Mumbai Modern :: Death of Architecture

Rupali and I had vaguely discussed to do a project on documenting the modern buildings in the city of Mumbai for the sake of several visitors - architectural or otherwise. Inspite of knowing several buildings of interest, often we would find ourselves struggling with names when asked to recommend a friend. Besides, much travel books on Mumbai end up focusing too much on either the ancient heritage - the caves, the temples, the churches or else, the popular - Marine Drive, Nariman Point, Fort and so on. A whole range of built works that one passes by almost everyday comes to be grossly overlooked by visitors, or even architects for academic study. In Mumbai, studies of historical precincts have been done for long now. Entry points in understanding space through history in architectural academic discourses often don't work well given the new spatial orientation through which students associate with the built environment today. It takes a good amount of work to open students to certain characteristics of built settings that they often tend to take for granted, or even undervalue due to the overriding market-driven "cleansing" narratives. On of the initiatives in our History-Theory program at SEA was thus to make students look at their everyday neighbourhoods, their surroundings through a strategy of defamiliarization. I was keen to take this one step further into looking at specific buildings which shape Mumbai's modernity. "Let's do a 'Mumbai Modern'", came the idea.

Two years ago, our third year studio put together a study on about 24 modern buildings of Mumbai over the last 100 years that are often overseen as projects of value. The work culminated in a poster bringing together drawings and photographs of our modern heritage. The poster deliberately skipped some buildings like Kanchanjunga (by Charles Correa) and instead brought to light his LIC colony (in Borivali) and the Portuguese Salvacao Church (in Dadar) which often get missed out. Correa has done significant work in Mumbai - including the SNDT campus and the Dadar Catering College which do not get discussed as much as Kanchanjunga. Similarly, academia has missed discussing Uttam Jain and Kanvinde who contributed buildings like the Indira Gandhi Research and Development Centre (Goregaon) and Nehru Science Centre (Worli) respectively. One wonders why don't we take these projects seriously? The project thus became about creating a repository of everyday-modern buildings of Mumbai, and culminated into an A0 poster!

Early this year, Rupali got me to present the work at the Death of Architecture exhibition that opened in Mumbai. I was a bit confused about how it would fit within the premise of "Death of Architecture" and because I was also unclear about its curation. But in beginning to make meaning, several things opened up and settled within the frame pleasantly. The fact that the work was presented in one of the buildings the poster included, the celebration of architecture, and the subversions on modernism had already created an uneven ground for its discussion. I took the opportunity to premise the relevance of the study through the mapping of a certain change in the idea of public space - seen in the built forms of a socialist-nationalist India, their communal disposition and a certain honesty of expression - to that of a consumptive, bounded, insecure enclaving of the city, covered in shiny masks and false skins. The work became an index of buildings that traced ideological transformation of space through architectural engagement. 

In such foregrounding of the work, I proposed three points of relevance for the discussion of the project within the framework of Death:

1. Death of anything/anyone inevitably brings us in to a state of contemplation. It creates a moment of rupture which allows for thought and reflection. The Mumbai Modern offers an opportunity to trace the transforming spirit of space, the changing face of architecture, and puts us in a position to decide what we really come to value within our architectural environment.

2. When thinking of death, one is compelled to recall an anecdote by Charles Correa, and one of the things he admired about India as a country. He said that "India grows in its own decay." It is much valuable to think of growth and decay as a continuum. And to think of built environment through the metaphor of the "swamp" is particularly interesting, for it elevates the work of building as an eco-system, which regulates itself through simultaneous rejection and acceptance of emerging values. A thousand deaths collapse, and several births reappear simultaneously. Such a consideration brings architects in a unique position with death.

3. Having said the above, the city we live in appears to be an emerging ruin, not because of destruction, but because of its constant evolution. The landscape of incomplete structures, left over mosaic and morphing redevelopments characterize a unique setting of a ruin that awaits itself to complete forever. This lack, or incompleteness is what brings us closer to the city, for we witness its growth, we witness its transformation and embrace its change. And here, one begins to think what possibility do we come to imagine when we look at the built environment through the putative anxiety of the death of architecture?

City-Ruin 1

City-Ruin 2

City-Ruin 3

When is Space?

Incidentally, I have not mentioned anything on this blog about the major architectural exhibition that I worked on early this year: When is Space? - that which was curated by Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty, commissioned by Pooja Sood, held at Jawahar Kala Kendra. The exhibition took place during 21st January to 21st April 2018. The reason why nothing came to this blog is because I put together an entire separate website for the event (www.whenisspace.in). I contributed several writing pieces on the whenisspace blog. Besides, as the Assistant Curator, my responsibility was to put together the exhibition catalogue, the exhibition placards, overseeing the content and design and lastly conducting the seminars and conferences as allied events. Alongside, I was also made responsible for putting together what came to be called as the 'Jaipur Room' - the one with all historical documents of the city. Often it becomes very difficult to ascertain what one's role has been in putting up an exhibition when working in a creative group. Several of our energies went together in creating many parts of the exhibition. My effort was to become a lubricant which could help mobilize the entire exhibition towards its completion.

Prasad's pre-planning for the exhibition layout.

Pankaj Sharma with the Curatorial Team, on Jaipur Archives

Jaipur Winters with the team

The curators involved me generously over the entire planning - taking me together for site visits, studies and archives. I have to commend Rupali and Prasad for their persistence and hard work with which they envisioned ideas into reality. I feel too insignificant of my contribution within the entire process as compared to their work. I merely tried to "fill in" where some directorial purpose was required as they focused on other more important things. This was more circumstantial than intended, for I was quite occupied assisting Riyas Komu for Serendipity Arts Festival's 'Young Subcontinent' Project in Goa. There was substantial traveling and research involved along with significant amount of coordination that went into bringing and installing artists from across six countries of South Asia for the Young Subcontinent Project. Within this, there was my teaching at SEA along with visits to Jaipur. It was useful to be informed about the developments in person, however, my initial involvement began from refining the curatorial note and then working on the graphic material for the exhibition, eventually robustly taken over by our project assistant Dhruv Chavan.

Pooja Sood, unknowingly, although perhaps rightfully qualified 'When is Space?' as one of the largest exhibitions of architecture in India. While one had preliminary doubts, one was compelled to believe in her pre-assessment on seeing the works manifest on ground. Which other architecture exhibition brought five live installations, life size scaled models, room full installations and a range of drawings and models together in once space? In addition, the exhibition also boasted of two conferences along with a dozen curatorial walks. Such an ambition clearly brings the scale of the exhibition at par with either Vistara, or The State of Architecture. The project almost became a mini-biennale. Originally intended to run for three months, it was extended by another month.

One of my biggest learnings was in the process of translation of the text in Hindi. The work opened me up to some really exciting conversation with our translator Sveta Sarda, and led me to the undertaking of my next important class project on translating the wonderful catalogue of Vistara exhibition (one that was curated by Charles Correa) as a part of my History class. As a translator / editor, one is constantly struggling between what essence to retain, and what to let go. It also opened me up to the rich internal contemplation on the idea of space as conceived in oriental philosophy.

To just shift behind the scenes, Prasad, since much beginning prefaced four ideas on space (something I think he learnt from Lefebvre's 'The Production of Space'). It is important that they are noted down for architectural consideration, and to remind oneself that architects play a role in steering the discourse on space. These four propositions, observed by Prasad from his research on understanding of space include four categories in which it has been understood and intervened so far:

a. Euclidean space: The mathematical understanding of space, through geometry and eventually cartography - taken ahead through endavours of Newton and Descartes in order to locate objects in reality. In essence, they imagined space as a container for events in life.

b. Einsteinian space: Einstein worked through folding space and time (and everything within it) into a continuum, indicating that we are aggregates of time and space. In some ways, it is an empirical extension of spiritual teachings of vedas. His famous mathematical equation E=mc2 also brings together life as energy that is constituted of light and matter.

c. The Kantian Space: Kant suggests that 'space' is something like a lens that one wears to see things (in a most basic manner). He suggested that human beings are born with certain 'apriori' idea of space and time.

d. Lefebvre's space: Lefebvre believed that space is a cultural phenomenon, and that it is produced through the constant act of social process. Thus, for Lefebvre, space was a social entity.


On reflection, one finds three important guiding principles that came to structure the exhibition. Incidentally, these were also points that I had raised in my critique of 'The State of Architecture' exhibition held at NGMA in Mumbai during 2016. These include:

1. The Idea of Practice (and not projects): The 'When is Space?' exhibition attempted to focus on the ongoing inquiries that individual architects are pursuing within their practices. The projects included in the exhibition were seen merely as sharp pointers that exemplified these questions. Thus, projects do not become an end in themselves for a practice, rather another opportunity to experiment with the ongoing questions that it tries to engage in over a longer term. The exhibition was thus, not a collection of architectural projects, rather a bringing together of contemporary inquiries on space hidden/latent within the architectural practices across the country.

2. The question of Space: Everyone on the team worked with the understanding that space is a produced act. It is not a default "given". The curatorial endavour attempted to provoke and ask the question of space as a historical condition - what it is, and what it means today. It thus did not differentiate between architects, artists, philosophers, intellectuals, theorists, students, and many other 'practitioners of space'. Thus, architecture was located within an expanded field, and the question of space was central to the curation. The exhibition asserted that space is a shared entity, and it is co-produced, where architects play the role of sharpening its ideological dimension. It is here that the exhibition also attempts to address the "when". People and space produce each other through a series of engagements, and certain configurations of space characterise key moments in time. The exhibition attempted to ask what regimes of thinking 'space' have existed, and how does one locate contemporary architectural practice within it?

3. The Paradox of Exhibiting Architecture: What methods does one employ to exhibit an entity that encompasses our very lives? The exhibition experimented and brought together a range of ways in which architecture gets experienced - through drawings, models, installations, mockups as well as the virtual. Further, it brought audiences to consider intangible elements like light as well as sound (music and spoken word) structure our experiences in a given space. The exhibition pushed people to create their own associations by throwing them into a gamut of carefully curated sensorial environments, punctured by historical and contemporary readings. In doing so, it provoked the viewers to think how life shapes up through sensorial interaction and consumption; how we become inhabitants of the world, and what, after all, is the nature in which we inhabit the world today?


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Some memories:

Planning Spatial Toys. Drawing by Dhruv Chavan under the direction of Milind Mahale.

Making frames for hanging the mounted photographs

Teja Gavankar's installation in process

The meticulous planning behind the House of Five Gardens by Samir Raut.

Vipul Verma working the construction of the endless cloth pieces in order to create a large enclosure within the volume of JKK, for Sameep Padora's installation

Bringing the tallest staircase on campus!

Reams of cloth...

The first iteration of the Floating Roof, by Dushyant Asher, held over his work desk at the School of Environment & Architecture

Please visit www.whenisspace.in for more information!

Shakuntala Kulkarni / Julus / Chemould Prescott Road

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published in Art India, July 2018

Women at War

Ornaments and items of armour in Shakuntala Kulkarni’s works present a measured tension between tenderness and aggression, claims Anuj Daga.



Ornamenting the self is an act of de-familiarization. It rearticulates the surface of the body into new outlines. At Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, in Julus and Other Stories, Shakuntala Kulkarni mobilizes these aspects of the ornament while also exploring its other characteristics like protection and decoration. The show, from the 13th of March to the 7th of April, comprises chalk drawings, photographs, cane armour and ornaments along with a video within which the artist inhabits these idea-forms.

The viewer is greeted with an array of cane armour objects and adornments presented like disembodied parts. Masks, cages, shields, headgears, bands, earrings, laces – all woven in cane in variegated shapes and forms – suggest different ways of covering and securing the body.

The use of cane domesticates adornment as well as armoury. Their exchange or utilitarian values are removed, making them amenable for the everyday. The work quietly blurs questions of sentimentality and security within each other. It brings us to consider the politics of adornment and armoury in unintended but clever ways. In several cultures, for example, strategic parts of clothing are embroidered so as to ward off the evil eye. If such an analogy is extended to ornaments and their location, decoration and their bodily fixation, it creates a space of distraction through which a politics of defence may be softly mobilized. On the other hand, locating cane armour within several delicately woven jewelleries at once mellows the aggression contained in the objects of war. The measured tension between tenderness and aggression begins to mediate a new understanding of power.

The wall-projected video animates the objects and drawings and brings them to life. The artist’s enactment – assuming new postures within the sinuous cane frameworks – gives rise to the experience of the female body adorned as well as trapped within the creations. Perhaps, it is here that a larger commentary on the subject of gender emerges in the artist’s work. Within which kinds of apparatuses is the narrative and social status of women enmeshed today? How does one challenge these frameworks and what kind of orientations can these questions have towards action and re-identification? Kulkarni’s chalk drawings offer studies presenting histories of ornament usage; they also trace the transformation of the ornament into a weapon on the path of claiming the powerful, performative self.

Madhusree Dutta / Cinema City

Curatorial Intensive South Asia / 2018

I spent the last two weeks of July 2018 at Khoj, Delhi as a fellow of the Curatorial Intensive South Asia program. Organized by Goethe Institut in collaboration with Khoj International Artists Association, the program aims at developing critical curatorial capacities within the South Asian region. The overall program is divided into two parts: a two week course on introduction to curatorial practice in South Asia, and an exhibition that the selected fellows put together individually in the latter part of the year. This year, six countries were represented at the program, with 12 participants. Six of us were from India, while remaining came from Pakistan, Nepal, Srilanka, Bangladesh and Iran. Over the two weeks, we had an intensive list of seminars on curatorship and art history within the region. The speakers included a range of curators, art historians, archivists and artists who spoke on different aspects of curatorial practice, exhibition making and art history.

The discussion opened in a thorough investigation of what constitutes the "contemporary" and what after all, is "curation"? How does one locate oneself in a larger framework? Leonhard Emmerling introduced us to System Theory - a concept which came from biology, developed in the '60s. The fundamental proposition of the theory is that humans are free, but bound to make choices. Emmerling explained to us how

...a system creates distinction or differentiation, in other words, a sense of distinct space. These spaces can be further, constantly differentiated, creating marked an unmarked "territories". The unmarked territories are not necessarily inactive, rather are contingent to claims. Further, a system works through communication (not on economy, wealth, etc.) Marked and unmarked areas create systems and subsystems. They communicate with each other through symbolically generalized media. Such symbolically generalized media could be love, art, truth, faith, power, etc. Art operates on the principle of aesthetic difference, which must be identified. Medium of art could be beauty. Aesthetic difference, however, is not beauty. The distinction between utility and beauty, is called by philosopher Jacques Ranciere, as the era of "as-if". 

Such an elaborate discussion framed the overall course, where ideas and evaluation of art were put in an ideological framework. These were followed by sessions on exhibition history in the world, and the emergence of "curation" as a practice. Art historian Kavita Singh oriented us to the concept of museums as an entity that share the dual responsibilities of gathering of treasures on one hand, and the gathering of knowledge on the other. She explained, how, the institution of the museum works through the promise of taking ideas ahead for centuries together by amassing, and preserving or maintaining collections. Kavita Singh principally spoke of the colonial museum in India - it history, politics and problems. 

Emmerling and Nancy Adajania later gave us a history of biennales across the world. They introduced us to art events with different periodicities (biennales, triennales or quick millenials). Adajania brought to our attention how a biennale is different from the museum or a gallery not only in its periodical occurrence, but also in the way it is mobilized. One cannot have a large scale event within a place without the State supporting it. Therefore, it is inevitably imbricated within the politics of the place it is located in. Adajania suggested through her historical tracing of art events how biennales have often hinged around, or began in a crisis of their place. She also indicated that an event like a biennale allows artists to rewrite the art historical canons. Political ruptures allow biennales to reframe their question(s), said Adajania. Within such evolution of biennales, the role of the curator comes to the centre after the 1990s, when, Nancy Adajania pointed, that the space of the critic is usurped by the curator and the collector. The curator then, is the new critic, and produces a space of "neo-criticality" that exists within the newly networked sphere of data aggregation and consumer experiences that emerged through the world wide web.

Alarming us of the high probability of curatorial desires coming to reality, Shuddhabrata Sengupta sensitized us to the responsibility of creating possibilities. He laid out for us further, a set of exhibition typologies that a curator may work with. While his idea-list was provisional, it helped us in thinking of curation in different dimensions of time and space. Some of his categories of exhibitions included a "generative or propositional type" which thinks of the event as a "future producing machine"; or "durational" where the curatorial intent is not exhausted by one event or exercise. Some others he spoke of were "epiphytic" where the resource is not really shared, but the work and space benefit each other; or "pedagogic exhibitions" which think of teaching itself as a curatorial process, that in which, students become collaborators in producing knowledge. Delineation of such strategies became extremely helpful for us to think of curatorial intents.

Our next few sessions were dedicated in looking at types of museums carefully. Leonard Emmerling  helped us in delving deeper into the questions of ethnographic representation within museums. He brought us to think of methods of categorizing objects within a museum, which are inherently political. How does one relieve exhibits and displays that are embedded in hegemonic power structures? How do we address the question of an "ethnographic gaze" that gets constituted through museums, which eventually become instruments of self-imagination? We pursued the question of ethics of representing cultures and the mechanics of validation within the institution of a museum. Kavita Singh delivered an engaging lecture on 'Memorial Museums' where she pushed us to think if these were built for the past or the future? She provoked us to think if any such position like an "innocent bystander" was even possible? 

Annapurna Garimella spoke on curating vernacular crafts within contemporary space. She spoke of the soft and strong ways in which curatorial processes intervene in the production of the vernacular. She argued that certain craft expressions were often tweaked in order to favour the aesthetic choices of the collectors. Curators became principal mediators of such shifting expressions. The vernacular, she indicated, has been an evolving tradition.

Curator and art historian Naman Ahuja brought to us the case study of his most recent, ambitious exhibition 'India and the World' which took historical objects lent from the British Museum, the National Museum (Delhi) and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Mumbai) to the venues in Mumbai and Delhi. In addition to the immense problem of the installation of the exhibition in Delhi (where about a dozen objects were eliminated), he shared numerous other aspects of translation, exhibition or display politics that render a curator as well as the curation in a complete alternate reading. On the other hand, Ahuja revealed a series of interconnections within the objects selected for 'India and the World' which compelled us to consider the multiple layers at which curation can work simultaneously.

Some of the questions that we discussed during the course with different speakers included the role and responsibility of curatorship in encouraging propositional thinking, engaging as well as subverting the demands of given agendas, avoiding giving into to the "gig" or even the "educational" economy. Natasha Ginwala opened the above questions to us, as she continued to provoke us to contemplate upon how mediation on issues can often become complicit within capitalistic flows, and how could it continue to wrestle with aspects of oversimplification or tropes that become populist in the social realm. All these questions were directed towards articulating South Asia as a critical geopolitical entity, and building new solidarities within the region.

Pooja Sood enthusiastically took us through Khoj's journey of organizing the '48 degrees' project in Delhi which was anchored around the three principal themes of 'Public - Art - Ecology'. Her presentation brought out the persistence of will, the agility of curation and the pursuit to influence.  Radha Mahendru and Natasha Ginwala finally introduced us to community based art practices and provoked us to consider what it means to be "socially engaged". Radha gave us the embeddedness of Khoj within the community geographically as well as socially and further went on to articulate what it means for an art institution to be within in urban village like Khirkee. She took us through a gentle history of Khoj and its work, and their own learning about what does it mean to be socially engaged? Whom does socially engaged art cater to? Whom does it benefit, and how "engaged" one really is? These were questions that Khoj seemed to readdress through its endavours and new initiatives particularly the 'Khirkee Mahotsav'. Shuddhabrata Sengupta stepped in once again towards the end to discuss issues of censorship and the ethical limits of art. He shared with us case studies where bounds of censorship were creatively dealt with in order to be able to include certain artworks / artists within politically sensitive exhibition sites. 

In the last section, Abhay Sardesai introduced us to the instrument of writing as thinking. He began by provoking us to think about the difference between an idea and a concept, and went on to open up the institutional apparatus. He explained how objects in an exhibition are often seen as illustrations of the concept note. However, Abhay suggested that objects must be seen as occasions that must complicate the reading of the concept note itself, rather than remaining mere illustrative. In setting up a dialogue between the curatorial note and the objects at display, the curator / writer may open up a productive space of thought. Abhay cautioned us against over-interpretation and urged us to work with in several modes: clarity and simplicity; clarity and complexity; contradiction and thickness of thought and lastly, consistency and rupture. 

The concluding session of the course was an introduction to aspects of contracts, budgets and checklists for planning an exhibition. Pooja demythified the role of the curator from an intellectual head to someone who is responsible from start to end, including ideation, execution, fundraising, audience building and so on. She clarified that while the intellectual component of the exhibition may be enticing, it constitutes only 20% of the overall job. The remaining is coordination and getting the exhibition up for display. In the end, Vishal K Dar spoke of display and exhibition design strategies. 

These were two weeks of intense learning and discussion. Apart from the above, the bonding sessions between the CISA fellows were fairly productive. Not only did we take time to discuss and help each other with our individual proposals, we shared notes from our own practices and places. The intercultural sharing is something that will now continue for a lifetime, and we look forward to participate in each others' exhibitions by the end of this year!