KHOJ International Artists’ Association launches of landmark publication-THE KHOJBOOK

Title: THE KHOJBOOK (1997-2007)
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 680
Price: 5999/-

KHOJ International Artists’ Association launches its landmark publication THE KHOJBOOK that takes a consolidated view of contemporary art practice in India during the dynamic decade- 1997-2007. Published by HarperCollins, the book marks the completion of ten glorious years of Khoj International Artists’ Association.
Says Pooja Sood, Editor, THE KHOJBOOK: “THE KHOJBOOK took birth with a desire to mark the first ten years of Khoj International Artists’ Association. What began as a celebratory impulse has, however, shifted into a consolidated reflection of art practice in India during 1997-2007. It has taken us three complete years to put together thought-provoking and insightful essays that would provide the reader and researcher with material in the artist’s own words. The book contains interviews of Indian artists who have passed through our doors at Khoj over a decade, while the essays by eminent art critics and thinkers situate and critique Khoj itself within a wider art historical context. I hope that the interviews of the artists and by the artists would not only contribute to contemporary discourse and learning but would also inspire those conversations between peers to continue.”

The unique compendium contains five lead essays by eminent art critics and thinkers of our time, and interviews of 101 Indian artists by fellow artists. The essays include: Mapping Khoj: idea | place | network by Pooja Sood, A phenomenology of encounters at Khoj by Geeta Kapur, Coming to terms with restlessness: An essay offered in friendship to Khoj by Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Probing the Khojness of Khoj by Nancy Adajania and The unbearable confusion around the idea of institutions by Rahul Srivastava. The interviews of the artists, however, have been placed in accordance with the respective year an artist has worked with Khoj. Some of the prominent names include: Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Manisha Parekh, Jitish Kallat, Riyas Komu, Bose Krishnamachari, Sumedh Rajendran, Sunil Gawde, Ashim Purkayastha, Tejal Shah, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Baiju Parthan, Jagannath Panda, Babu Eshwar Prasad, Ranbir Kaleka, Sudarshan Shetty, Pushpamala N, Jayashree Chakravarty, Navjot Altaf, Arunkumar HG, Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Sovan Kumar, Gigi Scaria, Nikhil Chopra and Ravi Agarwal among others.

Lavishly illustrated with over a 1000 coloured images of art works, this 680-page book covers not only some of India’s foremost contemporary artists, but also younger artists across the country who may well be the future vanguard. It offers the reader, researcher, student, collector and art aficionado a rich store of material ‘in the artist’s own words’ from which to draw their own inspiration and conclusions.

Writes Geeta Kapur in her essay A phenomenology of encounters at Khoj: “Khoj has been especially conducive to site-specific works. It began when the concept and desire to work with perishable materials and temporary structures, with erasable signs and the artist’s own body, had just surfaced on the Indian art scene. Khoj’s initial activity (1997-2001) was situated in Modinagar in the outskirts of Delhi, in a township built around the factories of the Modis. Khoj was lucky to be offered the Sikribagh estate for its two-week winter workshops hosting 20-24 artists. The Sikribagh environs included a bungalow and outhouses, gardens and a large pond, with fields extending to wilderness. These were explored in the work of the artists who then crossed the big iron gates of the estate to forage in the local market for usable stuff and for modest manufacture of artworks. They hung out at the local dhabas and, in a few cases, developed a sociological interest in the operations of the national bourgeoisie as it disinvests businesses, abandoning the working class to virtual penury. A designated ‘Open Day’ for spectators – mostly artist-visitors from Delhi ferried across for a viewing – brought the art-idyll to critical attention. Modest by international standards, Khoj thus inaugurated an art practice embedded in nature and common culture; an informal, everyday practice of no extraordinary consequence except as a way of living it out in a temporary commune with basic facilities in what was already a highly mobile global residency circuit.”

According to Shuddhabrata Sengupta (as taken from the essay Coming to terms with restlessness: An essay offered in friendship to Khoj): “As a witness to and participant in the emerging conversation on contemporary art and cultural practice in Delhi, I, like many others have seen Khoj grow, change shape, find new lodgings, and settle into the life of the city, and the wider world of art-making. What has struck me is the diversity and variety of the kinds of people and practices that have passed through Khoj. From the earliest workshops, to the residencies, events, performances, exhibitions, discursive encounters and other kinds of gathering that Khoj has facilitated, the entire range has been impelled by the possibility of the unexpected encounter. Artists who pass through Khoj (especially those on more stable residencies) play a significant role in shaping the space through their presence. Each residency, each event changes Khoj. But the spine, the backbone, of Khoj is built out of the serendipitous possibilities that outlast the temporal dimensions of a specific unexpected encounter between different practices and practitioners. Sometimes, the chance meeting between different people at a Khoj event matures into long-lasting bonds that occasionally transcend even very difficult geo-political barriers. This process is the most efficient guarantee of Khoj’s continuity. Khoj will endure as an institution because it has engendered a community of art practitioners, and as long as that community desires its bonds, Khoj will continue to receive its human sustenance.”

According to Nancy Adajania (as taken from the essay Probing the Khojness of Khoj): “The coming together of any group of creative minds must be celebrated as a festival of the imagination. The advent of the Khoj International Artists’ Workshop in 1997, with the formation of a working group comprising six artists and a gallery director, is such a benchmark in the history of postcolonial Indian art. The achievement of the Khoj model is that it has transformed the lives and work of its practitioners. It has anticipated and provided for the consequences of the mobility that globalisation has imparted to Indian artists in the postcolonial world. By amplifying their context from nation to region to globe, Khoj has produced a valuable platform and network – one that gives them the latitude, the depth of field and the tactical flexibility to deal with a range of emerging art-historical provocations. Khoj has made them aware, over the years, of possibilities that they can pursue, artistic choices that they can empower themselves to make. And thus, in an art situation that was for nearly four decades many steps behind its Western point of reference, Khoj registered, for the first time, the sensation of being many steps ahead. Its emphasis on process, rather than product, liberated artists from the commodity focuses of the gallery system; its lively laboratory atmosphere brought Indian cultural producers into close communion with colleagues from other countries, breaking down the nation-centric self discourse then in force.”

Gallery Espace presents Lava

Mrinalini Mukherjee

Lava

Bronze Sculpture

On view till 15 May 2010; Monday to Saturday, 11am- 7pm



Gallery Espace is proud to present Lava, bronze sculptures by one of India’s most senior artists Mrinalini Mukherjee. Her current body of work has taken three years to complete and includes over 30 sculptures.


Born in 1949, Mumbai, Mrinalini Mukherjee is the daughter of renowned artists Benode Behari and Leela Mukherjee. She studied painting at M S University of Baroda between 1965 and 1970. From 1970 to 1972, she did her post-Diploma in mural design under Prof. K G Subramanyan. Her artistic experimentations have traversed the mediums of natural fiber, wax, ceramic and more recently metal. Her works are well collected world over, featured in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford England, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, U.K, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, NGMA, New Delhi and the Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhawan, New Delhi, besides other prominent private collections.


…”Mrinalini Mukherjee’s sculpture invites a much closer reading than her formal repertory and the syncopated way she has of treating it would seem to indicate. The liminal gesture of the hemp knot in her early work has an import whose consequences can be readily followed in all of her production. The predilection that she demonstrates for the counterpoint of the folds, the shimmer, the way she has of using the firing accidents in her ceramic pieces are all variations on this. She takes pleasure in all the surface imperfections – the phenomena of bronze oxidation, the iridescences of the patina, the minuscule asperities of the material – which, far from disturbing the unity of her materials, actually reinforce her intention all the better, for she seeks to confer upon them the illusion of an outer layer that takes on the value of a threshold, a protective envelope, a skin that gives life to all that it covers.


The bronze pieces disclose the presence of an object at their center that resembles a pot at times, a wineskin at others – rounded like a colocynth with its scapes, its leaves and its stems. It is as if Mukherjee were revealing the different stages in the growth of a plant -from its birth under the foliage to the emergence of tubers and finally the majestic blossoming into the light of day. The leaves grow and spread around the axis of her works as if under the effect of a breath, under the impact of an irresistible force. The object that opens and blossoms before our eyes literally emerges from its womb, and in so doing, shows all the signs of its effort to come to light: the jagged, scalloped, serrated, random, indecisive, hesitant motifs, like so many caprices that might pass for natural laws. The body merges with the foliage and is thereby concealed from the eyes of mortals, like the gods or the woodland spirits in certain ancient cultures. As for the material that purports to embody it, it can thereupon only acknowledge the precious paradox of its metamorphoses by way of a lightening or a natural evaporation of sorts…”

— Henry-Claude Cousseau,

Director, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Khoj Studios presents In Context:Public.Art.Ecology

New Delhi: In continuation with its vision to promote alternative art practices, particularly in the domain of public art, KHOJ International Artists’ Association presents a multi-dimensional art project emerging out of a six-week residency program around the multiple ecologies of the city. The project supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in India entitled In Context:Public.Art.Ecology features artists from India, Germany, Japan and USA. The works will be on view at 3 venues including the Khoj Studios, public spaces at the Select City Walk Mall and 20 Barakhamba Road from 8th April- 16th April 2010.

Apart from the works by the artists in residence at Khoj, the project will also feature a sculpture and a public intervention work at the Pushp Vihar Monday Market by Thukral & Tagra, an innovative sound installation by Aastha Chauhan and Video Works by Sheba Chhachhi, Gigi Scaria and Ravi Agarwal at the Select City Walk, Saket, New Delhi.

Since 2002, Khoj Studios has seen a spate of residencies. Pooja Sood, the Director of Khoj explains: “While both workshops and residencies are process and exchange driven, the intention and outcomes are slightly different. The slower-paced residencies, which generally last six to eight weeks, are limited to a smaller number of participants, at most six, allowing for a sharper interrogation of the city, as well as a more intimate and meaningful exchange between artists and their work processes. So if you happen to hear strange voices while using one of the washrooms at Khoj Studios or meet somebody encouraging you to plant trees at Barakhamba road, it may be time for you to realize the reach and importance of art in the public domain.”

Culminating on April 8, all the projects by the KHOJ artists in residence focus on interventions in the public sphere. The projects range from mapping weather patterns and the effects of climate change to examining the significance of trees in the context of road zones. From designing a tableaux that will interact with people on conservation to building a natural biological water purification system; and from making an interactive video sculpture to an intervention that traces the paths of people and their constitutive objects from Chandni Chowk to Gurgaon.

The participating artists of residency are: Andrea Polli & Chuck Varga (USA), Sylvia Winkler (Austria) & Stephan Koperl (Germany), Sohei Iwata (Japan), Aliya Pabani, Namrata Mehta, Tejas Pande (Bangalore), Sheba Chhachhi (Delhi) and Navjot Altaf (Mumbai).



Project-1: Title-Hello, Weather! & Breather by Andrea Polli & Chuck Varga
Project Type- Installation & web based project

Project Description & Location
Hello, Weather! (aka Namatse, Mausam!) - The installation maps the local weather conditions and attempts to de-mystify the collection and use of weather and climate data by bringing artists, technologists and ecologists together around citizen weather stations. This project investigates cooperative media related to weather and climate observation and science and builds on the existing international phenomenon of Personal Weather Stations in which enthusiasts worldwide combine DIY technology with organized web forums for collecting and analyzing data. The project both visualizes and sonifies the data and invites audiences to engage with the data available in a variety of formats. In addition to the Khoj station, Hello, Weather! currently has four Professional Weather stations in operation: two in New York City, one in Los Angeles and one in Zurich. This project would be displayed at Khoj Studios.

Breather- It is an interactive sculpture that illustrates that one person every hour is killed by air pollution in Delhi. It would be displayed at Select City Walk Mall, Saket

About the Artists
Andrea Polli -Andrea Polli (www.andreapolli.com) is an artist, Associate Professor in Fine Arts and Engineering and Director of Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media at The University of New Mexico. Polli's work has been presented widely in venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art Artport and The Field Museum of Natural History and has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News and others. In 2007/2008, she spent seven weeks living in Antarctica. www.90degreessouth.org

Chuck Varga (USA)-In 1985, Chuck Varga (www.chuckvarga.com) joined with a group of five like-minded individuals and founded the theatrical rock band GWAR. Varga created the character Sexicutioner, who starred in eight major productions of GWAR that toured the US and Europe in over 1000 shows. He also wrote scripts, designed and built costumes and sets, wrote and designed over a dozen graphic stories for the GWAR comic, and co-authored two feature-length films including the Grammy-nominated Phallus in Wonderland.

Project-2: Title- PPR (Passenger Propelled Rickshaw) by Sylvia Winkler & Stephan Koeperl, Project Type- Intervention in public space

Project Description and Location
PPR (Passenger Propelled Rickshaw)-The project emphasizes on the fact that self powered vehicles are going to play a major role for short-distance transport in the sustainable cities of the future. It focuses on the use of cycle rickshaws in Delhi. A prototype of a PPR (passenger propelled rickshaw) is going to be constructed. In this vehicle the hierarchy of passenger/puller is transformed into a temporary collaborative unit where physical power and logistical knowledge are shared to bring things forward. The artists would engage the passers-by in a breathtaking ride on the PPR to fuel the dream of a post-oil society. It would be displayed at Select City Walk Mall, Saket.

About the Artist
Sylvia Winkler (Austria) & Stephan Koeperl (Germany)-Sylvia Winkler & Stephan Koeperl got both their degrees from the State College of Art Stuttgart, Germany Grants from the State of Baden-Württemberg, the DAAD, the Austrian Government and the Canadian Cultural Council. Their temporary interventions are developed specifically for each situation and are always the result of observations made on location. By minimalistic means, they create unexpected situations for the anonymous passer-by.


Project 3 : Title- Fieldwork in Delhi by Sohei Iwata
Project Type- Installation & Intervention in public space

Project Description and Location
Fieldwork in Delhi -Sohei Iwata is currently developing the ‘Cell House’ in a farming village in West Bengal. As an experiment during the In Context:public.art.ecology project, Sohei is working with modifying the rural Cell House for urban environment. He will examine how efficiently his water purification system using the bacteria filter can work for the underground water in Indian cities or the tap water supplied by the government. This project would be displayed at Khoj Studios.


About the Artist
Sohei Iwata- He studied 'Art Project' and 'site-specific work' at Tokyo University of Arts. He organized art project 'SICE' in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina from 2003-2007. It was one of the biggest international art events in Sarajevo after the Balkan War. From 2008, He was chosen by the artist sent by the cultural affairs, Japan and started a new art project titled ‘Apamnapat' at Santiniketan, India. The purpose of 'Apamnapat' is to developecological houses for ethnic minorities in India.

Project4: Title-The Object of my Extension by Namrata Mehta, Aliya Pabani & Tejas Pande, Project Type- Intervention in public space
Project Description and Location
The Object of my Extension attempts to map the network of social exchanges that connect workers from the streets of Chandni Chowk to the Cyber Parks of the "new" Gurgaon. Customized objects are designed to collect people's reflections on how their daily spaces are tempered by individual memories and aspirations. Their trajectories and collected narratives trace routes that are not simply constrained to the available road and railways, but that overlap, recur and project over impossible distances. Just as the city itself is perpetually extending from a notional past, this project conveys the various “cities” of the people who extend themselves and travel impossible distances within it. This project would be displayed at Khoj Studios.


About the Artist
Namrata Mehta is an advanced diploma student at the Centre for Experimental Media Art, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. She has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. Some of her recent projects engage tactical media and community participation to explore various aspects of the urban experience. Her current research interest is to map material and non-material exchanges by initiating symbolic interactions with boundary objects.

Aliya Pabani is currently pursuing research at the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA) in Bangalore. She holds a BA in English Literature and Psychology from McGill University, in Montreal. She is currently exploring possibilities for representing the range of interactions that constitute public infrastructures, using film to simultaneously capture a comprehensive narrative and trace individual trajectories within it.

Tejas Pande, a graduating student of interdisciplinary design at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, takes an interest in understanding the deeply permeating nature of urban spaces and the possibility of their manipulation as tools of communication and change.

Project 5: Title-Bhogi/Rogi by Sheba Chhachhi
Project Type- Interactive video intervention

Project Description and Location
Bhogi/Rogi is an interactive installation which offers the viewer an experience of herself/himself as constituted and transformed by what she/he consumes – food, goods, words…… The installation explores the continuum between consumption- production-homogenization; with particular reference to transgenic foods, through a series of real time transformations of the body self of the viewer. Although restricted to one viewer at a time, the transformations are visible to all in the vicinity. Sheba Chhachhi in collaboration with Thomas Eichhorn would display this project at Khoj Studios.


About the Artist
Sheba Chhachhi- An installation artist and photographer, Sheba Chhachhi’s works address transformation, marginality and the play between the mythic and social in the context of gender, representation, urban ecologies, violence and visual culture. Her work has been included in several international art exhibitions, biennales and triennials and many publications. She has exhibited widely in India, Europe, Japan, South and North America, and has published writings, given talks and conducted workshops, research and projects relating to these concerns.


Project 6:Title-Barakhamba 2010 by Navjot Altaf
Project Type- Intervention in public space


Project Description and Location
Barakhamba 2010 examines the significance of trees in the context of road zones, and working towards ecological sustainability and social equity. This project is in collaboration with some of the people who had participated in the 1st phase of the project ‘BARAKHAMBA 2008’, and other interested individuals /groups from Barakhamba Road and other parts of Delhi who have been taking initiatives to make a difference such as planting new trees , working towards de chocking of the trees and looking at the state of soil and creating awareness about many issues regarding the trees and saving of the trees . Environmentalist Ajay Mahajan, one of the collaborator is from ‘Kalpavriksha’, an organization, active amongst other areas in researching the significance of trees in the context of road zones, and working towards ecological sustainability and social equity. The present concern is whether after possible rectification like creating minimum / possible required space ( adding soil and manure ) around the replanted trees and existing more than 100 years old Bahedas have better growth to be able to provide benefits to the people, and other living beings - trees are supposed to give). The horticulture department from the NDMC has responded to the proposal and is working with the Navjot towards above mentioned concerns on Barakhamba road right between Barakhamba Metro Station and Mandi House circle. Says Navjot: “I, as an artist believe that when the artistic strategies become one with the points of participants engagement. What emerges is a new way of thinking about the purpose of artwork in totality. But to understand this work is to recognize that process and all associated activities because this is not a case of a final product /object to which all else is preliminary.” The project would be displayed at Khoj Studios and at 20 Barakhamba Road, New Delhi


About the Artist
Navjot Altaf -Navjot has had a number of solo and joint exhibitions in India, Germany, New York and have participated in major national and international exhibitions, biennales and triennials. She has also participated in national and international artist’s workshops and residencies and has presented papers in seminars on art in India, Japan, Bangkok, U.K. U.S.A and Canada. Since 1991 she has been engaged with interactive /collaborative projects with Indian and International visual artists, classical vocalists, documentary filmmakers and technicians. Simultaneously since 1997 she has been engaged with ongoing site specific / public art projects in collaboration with Adivasi artists/ communities from Bastar, Central India. The process deals with the issues related to interactive /collaborative art practice as a negotiated strategy.



Details of participation by other artitsts
Sculpture & Intervention in public space by:-
1.Thukral & Tagra titled Apocalyptron – 1” (from the series The Dawn of Decadence) (2009; resin, iron and decals; 14 feet x 7’ x 4.5’) Select City Walk Mall, Saket


Description- It is a 4.2 meters high sculpture created entirely from cast-resin bottles of various types of products, commonly found in supermarkets around the world. It is modeled after one of the popular Japanese Transformer figures from comics and animated films, specifically the “Gundam” series. Each of these bottles are labeled with the artists’ tongue-in-cheek branding of “Bose-dk” (the transliteration of an Indian abusive term). Apocalyptron imagines a world where consumerism has gone berserk, gargantuan and monstrous, threatening to destroy human civilization. The sculpture both celebrates and critiques the culture of consumerism.



2. Thukral & Tagra titled Pehno at Pushp Vihar Monday Market at Near to Select City Walk Mall on 5th April & 12th April 2010

Description- The project is part of PUT-IT-ON, an ongoing research project which explores alternate mediums to spread awareness regarding HIV transmission and the AIDS epidemic. It is about identifying the gaps in the current communications surrounding education and prevention and aims to provide solutions where existing media have failed to achieve results. Started in 2005, the project aims to use multiple platforms and media to target diverse sections of the populace. Through the use of visuals and mass-produced commodities, the goal is to infiltrate multiple strata’s of society in which discussions about sex education and health care are fraught with shame, taboos and restrictions.

PEHNO! is the most recent and localized version of this project, going to the heart of the new Indian consumer society and introducing the subject with humour and wit. The plan is to present a spectacular and appealing facade to draw unsuspecting people in to the discussion, reaching those who may consciously avoid the subject. The target audience here is the rapidly developing adolescent and young adult community, which is beginning to become sexually active and may have little or no knowledge about HIV, how it is spread and how it can be prevented. This demographic group, with disposable incomes and access to privacy, may be among those most at risk in India today.


Sound Installation by:-
3. Aastha Chauhan titled Muft Ki Saklah & Gharelu Nuskeh at Toilets of Khoj Studios

Description- This special edit of Home Gharelu Nuskhey & Muft ki Salah (home remedies & free advice) will be played in a loop from the speakers in the toilets of the Select Citywalk mall. It talks about good digestion, beauty/ hygiene tips, ageing, balding, how to lose weight etc. The audio piece is an edited compilation of interviews/ conversations with medical practitioners as varied as the local baba to a dietician at a private hospital and number of local residents of Khirkee, Saket. The major thrust of the programming is local Gharelu Nuskhev & Muft ki Salah (home remedies & free advice) for alternative medication.

The conversations unpacks not just nostalgia for grandmothers’ home remedies, they also address the loss of ecology (plants and otherwise). Migratory birds that have stopped visiting the Satpula dam, increasing number of kidney related diseases, the staggeringly large quantity of pesticides in the fruits and vegetables, rapidly depleting ground water, pros and cons of Allopathy, Baba ramdev’s yoga etc.


Video Works by:-
4. Sheba Chhachhi titled The Water Diviner 2008; Duration 3mins, looped three times ( 9mins) at Select City Walk, Saket.


Description- The video, The Water Diviner, is about the loss and possible recovery of our cultural memory, rich in eco - philosophy. The current environmental crisis has led us into an instrumentalist relationship with water, where we are beleaguered consumers trying to meet our needs in the midst of contamination and scarcity. The video is part of a large multimedia installation with the same title.


5.Gigi Scaria titled Panic City 2007; Duration 3min Single channel with sound at Select City Walk, Saket


Description- In Panic City the artist is trying to comment on the new construction fever and the cleaning process in which the government is involved for the upcoming commonwealth games in Delhi. The panic city is an animation constructed from photographic stills. Says Gigi: “The area you see in the video is the old Delhi shot from the minaret of Jama Masjid. I took almost 36 shots, which are stitched together and then used the flash animation to move the buildings up and down. The music used was a mix of western classical and the opera records from Pavarotti to show the role of a 'conductor'. The conductor takes the stand as an outsider and controls the event from a higher pedestal. In the same manner the forces of globalization conduct the waves of change into the urban scapes of India, which churns the existing local system into jeopardy. Most of the area you see in the video was once part of the target for the cleaning drive. Panic city also functions as a musical video without forcing the viewer to get into any of the serious discourse. In the sense it suggest that the ignorance make us rejoice and find beauty in the most panic situations of our times.”


6.Ravi Agarwal Polluted Waters; Duration 3.30 mins at Select City Walk, Saket

Description- The video shows a river which is dirty and black with sewage. It is unusable even for the fish that cannot survive in it. There is an attempt to identify-How dirty is dirty, and where do the boundaries of the pure lie?