Nikolai Gogol Short Stories Merge In Bhanu Bharti’s New Stage Production Titled Doobi Ladki

New Delhi: Eminent theatre director Bhanu Bharti presents ‘Doobi Ladki’; a theatrical play that portrays a unique blend of three of Gogol’s famous short stories - The Overcoat, The Nose and A Night in May. The play is a simple love tale albeit portrayed in a multi-dimensional setting of supernatural and magical world of human complexities. A new production from Bhanu Bharti, the play will be staged at Abhimanch Auditorium, NSD, Bhawalpur House, Bhagwandas Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi from March 18, 2010 to March 21, 2010 from 6:30 p.m. daily. Extra shows on Saturday and Sunday will be at 3:00 p.m.

Says Bhanu Bharti: “Gogol’s writings acquired a special meaning for me after my interaction with the Indian tribal society and culture. Akin to Gogol’s world of humorous intrusions of the magical with the banal, the customs and the cultural traditions of the tribal Indian society are equally engaging. Hence, I chose to recreate Gogol’s stories on stage. Even though Gogol’s stories were written long back, still they have a strong allusion to our own times and its consumerist culture, which have blinded us totally not only towards our fellow beings, but also towards our own progeny and future.”


‘Doobi Ladki’ – A brief synopsis

Adapted from three of Gogol’s famous short stories - The Overcoat, The Nose and A Night in May, the play ‘Doobi Ladki’ is about a self seeking and self-centered father, who abandons his offspring to perpetual emotional and physical agony. He is exploitative and blinded by his greed. His own son rises in revolt against him and the curse is finally cured. Set in Betab Nagar mohalla (society) in Bihar, the mohalla has all kinds of characters living together – barber, tailor, copier clerk, munshi, drunkard, a constable along with the powerful ones. But, behind this seemingly liveliness of the mohalla, lies a tragic tale of the ‘Doobi Ladki’. It reveals itself when a mother and a daughter (Gul) enters the mohalla, with the intention to live there.

Gul (heroine of the play) falls in love with Nanhe who is suffering at the hands of his father, the evil Chaudhary and his step mother, who in all probability had killed his mother. Gul’s and Nanhe’s love story emerges as a metaphor for the ‘Doobi Ladki’, a reference to the Gogol’s story A Night in May or the Drowned Maiden in which the boy who is being exploited by his father is finally helped by a ‘drowned maiden’ who comes to his rescue. Here, Gul imagines herself as that maiden and begins to believe that she too is living the same curse as the magical maiden of Gogol’s story. Nanhe gets a shock when he comes to know about it and he decides to remove the curse of the ‘Doobi Ladki’ from his mohalla. From here the high turning point of the play takes place, where it enters a world of fantasy.

Then there are other characters like Nakkal Nawees, a copier clerk who is dedicated to his job, taking special relish in the hand-copying of documents. His threadbare Overcoat is often the butt of his colleague’s jokes. One day Nakkal decides it is necessary to have the coat repaired, so he takes it to his tailor, who declares the coat irreparable. The cost of a new overcoat is beyond Nakkal's meager salary, but, when he buys one, he becomes the talk of his office. From an introverted, hopeless but functioning non-entity with no expectations of social or material success, Nakkal progress to one whose self-esteem increases and thereby expectations are raised by the new overcoat. His hopes are quickly dashed by the theft of the coat. He attempts to enlist the police in recovery of the coat and employs some inept rank jumping by going to a very important and high ranking individual but his lack of status (perhaps lack of the coat) is obvious and he is treated with disdain. He is plunged into illness (fever) and cannot function. He dies quickly and without putting up much of a fight.

Another story by Gogol’s - The Nose finds reference in Chaudhary’s character. A symbol of shallow and vanity of the higher class, the Nose assumes an independent identity. Other characters include Hakka Darzi and Nazeeb Nai who handle the situations with pragmatic intelligence and humanness. Even though poor, they emerge in the play as truly evolved.

In short, the play has ample theatrical elements of absurdism, the mysterious and the heroic feats of the human spirit caught into an ordinary and common place banality of a small town existence. It is a play which has comedy, tragedy, fantasy and metaphors that are used extensively and gives a complete experience of life. The strength of the play is that when on one side the fantasy is being enacted, at the same time the harsh reality of the present times are also portrayed in all its realism.



Further Details:

· Duration of the play - 1 hour 45 mins that includes two acts and nine scenes.

· Tickets – Priced at Rs 10, 30, 50 and 100 are available from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at NSD repertory office.

· Entry - First come first serve basis

· The Play has extremely interesting sound track and lights as it has a strong element of the supernatural or the magical along with the reality of daily life. The sense of magic and the supernatural is heightened with the sound track and lights and use of smoke in the play.

· 26 characters in the play

Gallery Espace presents ‘A Cry from the Narrow Between’

New Delhi: Two young artists at the forefront of their respective generations in the contemporary art scenes of India and China explore power, eroticism, passion and violence through their multi-media artworks. While Mumbai-based artist Tejal Shah depicts the fantasies visualized by LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex) people; Beijing-based artist Han Bing on the other hand explores the boundaries between profane and sacred; eroticizing ordinary, everyday objects—especially tools of manual labour, construction, and sources of sustenance.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “Both Tejal Shah and Han Bing through their multi-media artworks which includes photography, video installation, text-based works, sound works and performance art attempt to modernize, urbanize and discipline unruly populations that transgress the dominant social norms.”

TEJAL SHAH

• Three large scale photographic series: The first photograph titled The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne/Burned on the water is about Laxmi, a very well known hijra and human rights activist based in Mumbai who had expressed the wish to become like Cleopatra. The secondphotograph , Southern Siren – Maheshwari is also about a hijra called Maheshwari in Mumbai who expressed a desire to become a South Indian film star and see herself in a song and dance sequence, romancing the hero and to be romanced by him in return. The thirdphotograph You too can touch the moon - Yashoda with Krishna portrays Malini’s desire to be a mother by using Raja Ravi Varma’s painting ‘Yashoda with Krishna’ as a reference point.

• 40 small scale bazaar-framed photos in 5x7, 6x8 and 8x10 size from behind the scenes of the shoots of the above large scale works.

• Sound installation with text based works titled “What are You?” – Moving casually between staged performances, documentary, music video and appropriation, these portraits direct the viewer’s attention to the physicality of several members of the hijra (transgender) community in the red-light district of Mumbai. The film moves into the documentation of one individual’s experience of the gender reassignment process and concludes with slow dancing bodies moving with colorful, neo-op, go-go patterns inviting the viewer to the life embracing vitality of this community. The installation includes four beds, which are based on those found in local brothels arranged barrack style and painted in a distressed mauve finish.

HAN BING

• Live performance on March 12, 2010: Titled Dreams of a Lost Home: Mating Season, No. 12; Han Bing will be joined by local people in this live art performative intervention that will take place in the centre of the market, just outside GalleryEspace . Han Bing questions the idea that the urbanization and "modernization" of society as unproblematic "progress," and reminds us of what is lost or destroyed to make way for the new. Holding chunks of rubble from demolished buildings, between clumps of cotton from quilts, and coils of somber, curling smoke from incense, Han Bing and local participants lie dreaming of their lost homes and estranged ways of life, and the cold, impersonal distances that the modern city and lifestyle has created between people.

• Photographs: The artist will be showing performance photography from his Mating Season (2001) and Love in the Age of Big Construction (2006) series.

• Video: Titled Love in the Age of Big Construction, the artist asks the viewer to consider the rural people (whom we address as dirty, low-class and uncivilized migrant labourers) who without educational opportunities, start-up resources, obscene work hours, unsafe conditions and unreliable pay; use their bodies as an altar upon which they offer the nation its fantasy of urbanized modernity but, the city in return has nothing but contempt for them and their sacrifices. Han Bing’s video thus, is a sort of secular prayer to all those construction workers.

Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Announces Launch of ARThinkSouthAsia – annual fellowship programme in arts management & cultural policy

Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Announces Launch of ARThinkSouthAsia – annual fellowship programme in arts management & cultural policy

New Delhi: The South Asian Network of Goethe- Instituts, the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany, announces the launch of ARThinkSouthAsia, a fully funded annual Fellowship in Arts Management and Cultural Policy addressed at today’s cultural practitioners. In its first edition, seventeen fellows from across South Asia have been selected for the fellowship programme that includes a two week-long residential course at Manesar starting March 15, 2010. What gives this fellowship a unique distinction is that the chosen scholars will interact with international tutors on home ground before participating in a month long internship in Germany over the year 2010-11. The fellowship programme will culminate with a concluding seminar in March 2011.

The ARThinkSouthAsia Fellowship is designed to help develop skills, knowledge, networks and experience of potential leaders in the cultural sector of South Asia which includes museums, the visual and performing arts and digital media.
Says Dr. Stefan Dreyer, Regional Director South Asia, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan: “We believe that by supporting exceptional individuals to make a step-change in their skills and career potential, we can bring substantial benefit to the cultural field as a whole.”

The two week residential course at Manesar is designed to include a balance of theory and professional training and will consist of five to six modules which include latest thinking in cultural management in areas such as strategic planning, project management, strategic finance and fundraising, marketing, communication, and internet technologies amongst others. These modules will be led by a mix of Indian and international professional trainers and academicians and will be supplemented by expert guest lectures. Each participant will be offered a funded four week secondment/internship best suited to his/her needs, interests and objectives in a cultural organization in Germany during the year. The Fellows will attend a closing seminar at the end of the Fellowship year to present and share updates on his/her project and learnings of the secondment with new Fellows of 2011-12.

Says Ms. Pooja Sood, Project Director: “We had invited applications from practitioners working across a wide range of creative and cultural activity, as also from those who are working outside it who demonstrate a knowledge, understanding and passion for culture. We are elated at the response we received, with even artists and people with unconventional careers applying for the same. We have selected for the first programme, seventeen fellows from South Asia, with most being from the field of visual arts.”

Sachin Pilot inaugurated the opening of Transit Lotus, solo exhibition of recent paintings and fibre glass sculptures by artist Dharmendra Rathore

What: New Delhi, March 5, 2010: Sachin Pilot (Union Minister of State for Communication & IT) inaugurated the opening of Transit Lotus, solo exhibition of recent paintings and fibre glass sculptures by artist Dharmendra Rathore at Lalit Kala Akademi, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi.

Where: The show, being presented by Art Pilgrim, is on till March 11, 2010 Lalit Kala Akademi and would also be displayed at Art Pilgrim, A-689A, Sushant Lok, Gurgaon from March 12, 2010 to April 5, 2010.

Who: Present on the event were Geeta Singh (Director, Art Pilgrim), Madhumita Puri (Executive Director, Art for Prabhat), art curator Sushma Bahl, artists Dharmendra Rathore, Kanchan Chander, Pratul Dash, Durga Kainthola, Sangeeta Gupta, Dileep Sharma, filmmaker Rebecca Sands, designer Asha Kapadia and entrepreneur Reggie amongst others.

Special Economic Zones surface at Khoj Studios with “SEZ Who?”

New Delhi: Khoj presents SEZ Who? – an exhibition consisting of site-specific installations that question the rationale behind the making of SEZs ( Special Economic Zones) from March 6, 2010 to March 14, 2010 at Khoj Studios S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi. The exhibition would be followed by a seminar on March 11, 2010 at Khoj on issues around the city and land usage.

Khoj International Artists Association is an artist led, alternative space for experimentation and international exchange based in India. KHOJ seeks to promote cross cultural exchange within the visual practices of the 'Global South'. Since its inception in 1997 artists from Iran, Egypt, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Lebanon, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan and several countries in Africa, have participated in the Khoj workshops and residencies.

Project SEZ Who? was initiated by Tushar Joag and Sharmila Samant who invited fellow artists Justin Ponmany, Prajakta Potnis, and Uday Shanbhag to take on the role of a fact finding committee. The installations are an output of their in depth research as they visited areas affected by Special Economic Zones around Bombay in six months starting Jan 2009 (namely the villages in the Raigad district (MSEZ) and the Uttan-Gorai belt also called Dharavi island).

Presenting a dynamic relationship with space, the installations at the gallery change every day. For instance, the first day would witness sea salt being spread over the entire floor of the gallery. While on the second day, the artists would make salt from water of Uttan Gorai region and Raigad district finally creating salt piles and grain sacks. Drawings and documentaries also form an important part of the installations. Thus, the space gets altered significantly leading to a day by day unfolding of the project.

Khoj initiated the first programmes focusing on Public Art with artists’ residencies in 2005 and 2006 with Indian and international artists. These were preceded by an eco- art residency in 2004 as well as many smaller projects in the public realm around ecology and environment over the past 5 years. Khoj has also focused on community art over the last five years. More than nine projects have aimed at involving the Khirkee community that surrounds the KHOJ studio in New Delhi. Projects have ranged from artist- commissioned temple installations, to local shop make-overs, to clay toy-making with neighborhood children, all completed with community input at every stage. These projects not only ground KHOJ in its locality but ameliorate the somewhat alienating effect of an otherwise potentially elitist-seeming venture.

In 2009, Khoj supported 1mile², a global arts programme that asks communities to map the biodiversity, cultural diversity, and aesthetic diversity of their local neighbourhood, working in collaboration with an artist and an ecologist. Local and international artists worked with various communities and projects ranged from aural archives of local remedies and medicinal plants, to public interventions around the issue of identity and representation.

More recently in 2008 the 48˚C Public.Art.Ecology festival held in Delhi (curated by Pooja Sood) around 8 public sites with 25 artists from India and abroad interrogated the teetering ecology of the city through the prism of contemporary art. Through a number of art interventions in various public spaces around Delhi, the festival attempted to draw a diverse public into the world of this critical imaginary.

Bhavna Kakar opens a new gallery at Lado Sarai with Size Matters or Does It?

New Delhi: Latitude 28 presents Size Matters or Does It? – a unique exhibition that attempts to break the conventional notions about the apt size of a work of art. The exhibition is on from February 18, 2010 to March 10, 2010 at LATITUDE 28, F/208, Lado Sarai, New Delhi.

The opening of the exhibition would be accompanied with the launch of Bhavna Kakar’s new art magazine TAKE on art, a quarterly magazine focusing on art and cultural events from India and abroad. Guest edited by Shaheen Merali, the theme of the first issue is dedicated to the colour ‘Black’. What’s more, fifty limited edition small size framed artworks by Chittrovanu Mazumdar, concurrent with the theme of black, have been created by the artist especially for the launch of the magazine.
Says Bhavna Kakar, Director, Latitude 28: “The motive of the show is not to establish the commercial aspect of art in terms of the size of a work but to look at a gamut of contemporary artists whose works are fresh in approach and concept proving their proficiency at handling both BIG or SMALL format works. Since no specific size was allocated to the artists, their works are their own personal interpretations of the title Size Matters or Does It?”

Size Matters or Does it? consists of two parts. The first includes artists Arunkumar H.G., Baiju Parthan, Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Dilip Chobisa, G R Iranna, Mithu Sen, Manjunath Kamath, Pooja Iranna, Pushpamala N, Sarnath Banerjee, Prajakta Palav and Siddhartha Kararwal.

The second part will exhibit Babu Eshwar Prasad, Niyeti Chadha, Manisha Parekh, Minal Damani, Dhruvi Acharya, Chila Kumari Burman, Jayshree Chakravarty, TV Santhosh and Simrin Mehra Agarwal.

While, Baroda-based Siddhartha Kararwal’s mixed media work uses everyday objects and infuses them with multiple levels of meaning. Pooja Iranna’s sculptures and drawings are quiet and eloquent statements about the role size plays in a viewer’s reading of an artwork. On the other hand,GR Iranna’s large scale work Kawwali establishes a disconnect between the tradition of looking at art and the way art is experienced by the contemporary eye.

Arunkumar HG’s works uses humor as a method of uncovering the absurdity of size. He uses small figurines in the image of public figures to demonstrate the complexities of memorialization merged with cultural cravings for kitsch.


Pushpamala N considers constructions of history in her photographs, particularly the stories and voices of women. Her large and small images engage with histories that are generally unknown. With Lady on Bicycle, the artist explains that “Women learning to ride the bicycle was part of the social reform movement in India, along with women's education and widow remarriage. It signaled a new freedom and mobility. In the early part of the 20th century, women would pose for studio photographs against painted backdrops with a book in their hand. Spectacles, lady’s purse, book, and umbrella were markers of modernity.”

Baiju Parthan subverts the idea of fixed measurements through exploding the microscopic details of a fly in his image Ointment. Capturing its relativity to vision and perception, Parthan proposes a conception of size that is unstable and constantly shifting. Parthan explains that, “these two works are about our ideas about the world and to the lengths we go to protect, defend, and propagate them. The very fact that there are many such comprehensive views ( most of them religious in character) explaining the universe differently, suggest that these are all products of engagement between the human self awareness and specific geographical environments. One could consider these world views as artifacts of the human mind, similar to a balm or ointment that soothes the sting of our existential predicament - of not knowing why we are here in this world.” Like Parthan, Dilip Chiobsa also plays with altering perceptions of space and time in his painting in his image which manipulates traditions of painterly perspective.

Manjunath Kamath locates size in the practices of daily life. Weighing in on his paintings, Kamath says, “I have made twelve small works in 5 inch by 4 inch which can be symbolically called a series of twelve small lies. Lie is one of the strongest palliatives that the humans have adopted to make the life easier. The size may vary…big lies, small lies but they are omnipresent. Through my works, I probe the origin, growth and nature of lies in our society.”

Artist Jayshree Chakravarty uses large and small format works to probe the topography of surface. Her interest in minute details and textures creates varying visual experiences.
Simrin Mehra Agarwal large scale metal sculpture is awe-inspiring, suggesting the spectacle of size.

Minal Damani’s works move between flat and multi-dimension readings, disrupting any division between form and ground, and exposing the slippery relationship between binary oppositions.

Kumar Gallery celebrates 55th year with an eclectic annual show of master artists

New Delhi: As Kumar Gallery, one of Delhi’s oldest galleries founded in 1955, enters its 55th year, it’s time for celebrations galore! Bringing forth never-seen-before works by some of most coveted master-artists as well as younger names, Kumar gallery presents its annual show titled Celebration 2010; a group exhibition of more than fifty works including paintings in oil on canvas, acrylics on paper and sculptures by twenty-seven artists from January 25, 2010 to February 9, 2010 at Kumar Gallery, 56, Sunder Nagar Market, New Delhi.

The artists whose work will be showcased are A. Ramachandran, A. P Santhanaraj, Anil Karanjai, Arpana Caur, Ashok Bhowmick, Dhiraj Choudhury, F.N. Souza, G.R Santosh, Gopal Ghose, Jai Zharotia, Jamini Roy, K.S. Kulkarni, Krishen Khanna, K.S Radhakrishnan, M.F Husain, Paresh Maity, Prodosh Das Gupta, Ram Kumar, Ramgopal Vijayvargiya, Seema Kohli, Sangeeta Gupta, Sohan Qadri, Sakti Burman, Satish Gujral, Sankho Chaudhury, Sharad Sonkusale and Shikha Sinha.

Sunit Kumar, Director, Kumar Gallery says: “Celebration 2010 dwells on India’s blooming modern artistic endeavour through a historical framework, bringing some of India’s most revered post-Independence modern masters along with contemporary artists. Through this exhibition, we have brought forth an inimitable collection of artworks from as early as 1960’s to the present times and presents a panoramic overview of Indian contemporary art as it has evolved.”

One of the iconic features of classical Indian art has been its ability to blend ephemeral humanistic emotions with a vivid sense of the eternal as well as the metaphysical and mythological. This was primarily achieved via a deep sense of spiritual devotion on the part of the artist. For instance a master of crosshatching, Ashok Bhowmick’s Bull and Bird Series has been inspired from the Bronze Age and Indus valley civilization. Explains the artist: “The earliest cave paintings and the coins had bull engravings on them. Bull symbolizes power and I respect it. Notice how the bird calmly sits over bull’s head. The proximity of force and feeble is what teaches us a lesson.”

Founder member of the Triveni Kala Sangam, K.S Kulkarni’s paintings depict the world of the Indian peasant, a world still throbbing to the drum-beats of the folk-dancers, swaying with rapture to the hypnotic melody of the shepherd’s flute, jogging along in the ancient bullock-cart. It is also a world which reveals the tensions and travails of the peasant, caught in the vortex of this fast-changing world yet stolidly withstanding its blows and buffets. A superb draftsman, Kulkarni was also a master colourist. The fantastic vibrancy he achieved by the soft, light strokes of his brush cast an aura of light through and around the boldly and vigorously delineated forms.

Yet another founder-member of the famous ‘Calcutta Group’, Prodosh Das Gupta brought the self-conscious individuality of a modern artist into sculpture. His love of the body - of man, woman or trees - links his work with the great tradition of Indian sculpture. He built his sculptural forms through the modeling technique, i.e., using clay or plaster, but the resulting effect was ‘lithic’, that is as if they are carved from a stone block maintaining the essential simplicity of the human form and scooping out just what is redundant.

A poet, vajrayan tantrik teacher and master-abstractionist, Sohan Qadri dislikes creating figurative visuals as according to him “they destroy the painting”. Instead, he uses signs reminiscent of tantrik and ritual symbolism which epitomizes “energy or Shakti” which moves. The most challenging thing in Qadri’s art is technique. His works are to be seen back to front. He allows the colour to percolate through the thick hand-made paper he paints on, allowing forms to develop on the other side that he then textures by tearing and blending the surface. Call them bindus or yonis, but they represent an alternative harmony of form and texture. Over the years his work though has gone through a form of distillation. Colour has become lighter and lines the residue of textures.

Another self-taught artist, abstractionist and a bureaucrat in Indian Revenue Service, Sangeeta Gupta had started her artistic journey making intricate drawings. She wields the brush with finesse, suggesting the viscosity of ink, the glossiness of lacquer, the mist of heights, the glow of the sun, and the inherent palette of rocks when wet. Strident and subtle strokes, dots, and amorphous patterns unfold energy channels.

One of the most promising young painters of contemporary Indian art, Paresh Maity started out as a painter in the academic style, but over the years began to shift from atmospheric scenery to representations of the human form. Gradually the imagery and form became more and more abstract until the young painter with flourish of a brush laden with transparent colours began to create paintings of great evanescent beauty. Deriving his inspiration as much from the surrounding landscape as from folk forms and contemporary life, Paresh Maity creates a web of fantasies and stories soaked in beauty, pulsating with romance, passion and intrigue. Though recognized as a water colourist, the young painter is equally at ease with oil on canvas as is evident in his work titled Rani.