Gallery Espace Makes Art’s Winter Warm With Mekhala Bahl’s ‘quilted’ artwork in The Geometry of Error

New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents The Geometry of Error; a solo show of 14 works that includes five quilted works, five etchings on silk & four canvases by Mekhala Bahl from January 21, 2009 to February 28, 2009 at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi.

Says Ms. Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “The exhibition is a culmination of works created by Mekhala in the last two years. With her current body of work, Mekhala explores and incorporates the use of pattern within her large paintings and mixed media works where she scribbles, draws and prints to create visual and emotive layers. As viewers, we have to discard the need to immediately read familiarity into her images, and instead revel in the shapes and colours that seem purged of their recognizable forms.”

Mekhala Bahl was trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, after which she returned to India in 2003 to pursue her individual art practice. She has never restricted herself to single techniques or media and continues working with materials as diverse as glass, wood, silk, paper, plastic and quilting. Her technical oeuvre extends from block printing, etching and lithography, to drawing, painting and sculpture. Her images read like journals recording daily life.

In her current body of work, Mekhala displays an exclusive collection of quilted works along with etchings on silk and canvas, inspired from traveling and observing everyday objects. There is a predominant element of pattern in the work that at times guides the piece and in others simply resides in the background of the work. The use of the comic strip narrative and treatment results in works that appear large, playful and display colours that are unusual to reality and at times appear nostalgic.

Humour is often used to address concerns both personal and those of outward significance. On the same note, elements of collage and quilted sections of the paintings also add another layer and texture to the work, while encouraging the viewer to engage in the work, in a way that they may want to touch the three dimensional puffiness of the foam under the canvas.

The use of chine collé in the fine adhering of the fine silk on the backing surface is unique and gives an ethereal quality to the work. And drawing with the etched line creates marks that have strength in their stroke that is juxtaposed against the fragility of the surface on which they are drawn.

The artist explains: “I was always interested in experimenting with surface textures, whether it was silk, corrugated paper or plastic. I was drawn to the physical feel and appearance that was created by the foam underneath the surface. Quilting gives a bulbous shape and adds another dimension to the artwork. It makes the viewer almost want to reach out and touch the surface of the work and feel the actual softness below it.”

Explaining the title of her show The Geometry of Error, Mekhala Bahl says that her working style depends on intuitive mathematical calculations & games that involve measuring the distance between the marks created on the canvas. It is as simple as the much-cherished dot-to-dot game played during childhood days and yet her pure instinct-based works presents a flawless balance between colours and shapes on the canvas or fabric. For instance, in the work titled Single egg (Oil, ink, acrylic, lead, collage on canvas), the marks are created along the edges of the work only, following an invisible circular path. The order of these could not have been formed in any other way, but the one that exists as the balance and harmony is just right, creating an almost poetic narrative as these shapes dance along their pre-determined path. She also employs humorous anecdotes, memories and dreams in her images that stir the imagination of the viewer in an interesting manner. Her work Cart Strip (Oil, ink, acrylic, lead, collage on canvas), short for ‘cartoon strip’, is one such example that urges the viewer to start reading the work from a point and follow the small drawings to form their own humourous stories.

Mekhala’s work are however only seemingly abstract. They carry concrete images underneath which are usually only hinted at by the title of the work which may also serve as an entry point. For instance, works like Nest, Pancake, Picnic, Single Egg trigger an instant recognition with an idea, or an image. Her work titled NY Chimney (mixed media on quilted silk) explicitly suggests smoke curling out from an awkward building with two chimneys. The initials NY refer to New York City which forms the basis of inspiration of the work. Similarly, in Turn-Turn-Turn (mixed media on quilted silk), she draws a topless car, a swivel chair with hairy legs, croquet bats that play on their own through hoops that fly and many more that may not even be revealed unless they are found by the viewer. Sometimes, the non-abstractness of her work also reveals itself in a series of non-representational shapes that form a narrative. For example, Wooohooo (Oil, ink, acrylic, lead on primed linen) has been created out of spontaneous elation that the artist experiences while making overlapping circular forms, that sometimes seem heavy, other times inflated.

Thus, she repackages the tangible world with ideographs, signs and traces of observed reality. Unstructured and floating, her created world is open to instantaneous suggestion. Her textures have an evocative quality that command a closer look, and appear as independent entities in their own right. Explains Mekhala: “The textures, surfaces and drawings in my works are treated with secretive details, only identifiable from close and these same images transform into simpler shapes, marks and blocks of colour when viewed from a distance. I don’t think it’s necessary for the viewer to know that there are small sketches and imagery that is more recognizable than abstract. I find that my work can be viewed as both, or either.”

About the Artist

Mekhala Bahl studied briefly at the College of Art in Delhi before joining the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001, where she trained in printmaking and painting. In 2002, Mekhala was part of a Study Abroad Program in Japan and in the same year she was at the Palazzo Cenci, Rome for a Painting and Art History Program.

Since 2003, she has been pursuing her art practice in India and has had several exhibitions in India and abroad. She was an Artist in Residence in New York at the School of Visual Arts in 2007. Her work has travelled to international art fairs like Asia Contemporary Art Fair, New York and Art Dubai.

US-based Siri Khandavilli juxtaposes material concerns with the ‘BIG PICTURE’ in a unique show titled ‘Two Birds’

“Completely in control of my work, body and gaze, I declare that I am my own muse. There is nothing passive here” is the passionate belief of US-based Siri Khandavilli who is in India for her upcoming solo exhibition titled Two Birds that promises to strike a chord with every art lover this winter. The exhibition that comprises a combination of video-works and paintings (acrylics on paper) will be held at Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre from January 28, 2009 to February 4, 2009.

Born in Mysore, Siri Khandavilli is the daughter of N. Lakshminarayan who was a renowned Kannada film director of his times. She migrated to US and studied new media arts, video & 3D modeling at Arizona State University (ASU). Her works have been exhibited at short film festivals in ASU, Harrywood Gallery (both at Tempe), Modified Art Gallery (Phoenix), SIGGRAPH (San Diego), and Art Junction (New Delhi). Currently the artist stays, commutes and creates between India and USA.

Siri Khandavilli is an inter-media artist working in the realms of video art, paintings and installations. About her influence, she says: “Personally, there is an extreme attachment to the worldly, but I do question how important these really are! I call it looking at the ‘Big Picture’!”

So while Siri accepts that she, like any other young person of her age, worries about under-eye wrinkles, finances, pollution, global economy et al and yet, as an artist, seeks to transform these concerns onto a canvas that is far more ethereal and metaphysical.

The overall effect of her works is a feeling of the material world beginning to merge into the metaphysical. As the artist explains “My definitions, desires, politics, opinions and issues are literally painted against the backdrop of the Big Picture.” In this manner, her works become very personal, poetic and at the same time socio-political. Conceptually, there is duality and unity, contradiction and agreement in her works. It is the conflict between the nuances of worldly attachment and spiritual detachment that defines her canvas.

It is her video works, however, that foremost highlight the sensuous and the spiritual quality of her art. Sometimes ‘performances for the camera’ form the raw footage of her work. The unconventional use of intense colors, space, scale and strange juxtapositions combine to create a mesmerizing effect.

For instance, Two Birds is a video installation which occupies an intimate space created by the panels and walls in the gallery. The viewer needs to enter a narrow and personal space to view two videos facing each other through circular openings at the eye level. The first video consists of the artist’s face layered with a fleshy, orange-yellow mango. The face in this video faces and observes the other video where the artist is immersed in consuming a mango. The music and the visuals combine to create an effect that may be described as sensuous to some and spiritual or meditative to others.

Shares Set to Rise is another video that starts in black and white showing a drive in a mountainous area. The dull rocky terrain is slowly replaced by the beautiful sunset. The background plays radio financial news as the image starts flickering and the viewer begins to see a stylized chart tracking the stock market merge in and out of the sunset scene. The video and audio abruptly stop with the beginning of serene music and surreally beautiful sunset scene against the backdrop of majestic mountains. The artist explains: “This work originated on one of my many drives amidst the beautiful Ahwatukee mountains in Arizona, where I live. During these drives I listened to financial news on the radio. The silhouette of the mountains and the stock market's graphs started looking similar to me. I observed the beautiful colors of Arizona sunsets and sunrises thinking about the stock market's rise and fall. Two extremes that seemed unrelated and incompatible seemed to merge and diverge in this everyday experience. The consumptive thoughts of economy were punctuated by moments of joy in the realm of metaphysical.”

Like her videos, Siri’s paintings are also vivid in color. In her paintings, one can witness the abandon and joy of painting as well as the restraint needed for drawings. The intricate drawings in her paintings depict everyday objects, people and mundane sceneries as microscopic objects. The flattened 2-D quality of her work speaks of a clear influence of Indian traditional painting and a love for tribal arts.

Her paintings are usually small in size and are meant to be hung together in a series. The bold usage of red, black, blue and yellow colors addresses issues of human concern. Colonies 1, Blue Skies Floating in the Red, Red Cells Blue Cells & Scratch and Sniff Layers of Reality are just the few examples that signify her response to various world issues. Inspired from the encounters of daily life situations, she links material worry to a non material experience.

Expressing a similar theme of human predicament is her work titled Border Issues that portrays how trivial the idea of ownership of land and place becomes when placed against the backdrop of the ‘Big Picture’. Her work titled Sansex and Sunsets is similar to her video-work titled Shares Set to Rise as both link material worries to a very non-material experience of being immersed in the divinity of sunsets.

She further adds: “In all my work, I allow myself to be influenced by places around me and the situations that I encounter, this helps me break away from prejudice and stylization of any sort. My paintings are a confluence of spontaneity in its process contrasting against drawings that are executed on the painting’s surface. These drawings make everyday objects and scenes look like objects visible under microscope, or, say through a telescope. Some of the paintings are independent modules, put together as a single unit, as an afterthought. Fragmented, yet the whole remains the summary of these works.”

Gallery Espace presents Moving Beyond the Frame

Gallery Espace Explores Alternative Feminism Through The Diversity of

Five Women Artists in ‘Moving Beyond the Frame’

New Delhi: Cutting across boundaries and cultures by exhibiting the works of five renowned women artists from India, USA, and UK, Gallery Espace presents Moving Beyond the Frame: A Space for Alternative Readings..., a five-woman show exhibiting alternative concerns with femininity and feminism. The exhibition is on view from December 19, 2008 to January 13, 2009 at Gallery Espace, (Level 0-1), 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

The participating artists include Maxine Henryson, Catherine Mosley and Jaishri Abichandani from USA, Sutapa Biswas from UK and Paula Sengupta from India. The five artists have explored a variety of mediums including collages and printmaking, sculpture and installations, photography and drawings.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “Through their work, each artist deals with issues related to the fact that one’s identity is in a constant flux, be it their sexual or gender-related identity, be it how one deals with the self in society having migrated to a different country or in just attempting to decode another culture.”

Kolkata-based artist Paula Sengupta, who largely works in the genre of the autobiographical narrative, addresses issues of feminist concern through her work. Explains Paula Sengupta: “The present body of work addresses the lump in my throat, the numbness in my veins, and the loss in my heart for a land long lost.” Her usage of everyday objects like cloth, lacework, crochet and furniture transforms the exhibited area into an intimate domestic space.

Paula Sengupta recreates a delicate yet surreal space from the past where the viewer discovers reminiscences of women who led seemingly idyllic lives, yet had complex emotional uncertainties and secret desires to break free from social conditioning and the claustrophobia of the male gaze. For instance, in her diary-shaped installations titled Bay of Bengal & Hugli and Karnaphuli, she narrates her family stories to showcase miseries faced by her family during the Bengal partition and Hindu- Muslim rioting in 1947. She says: “In 1947, my family witnessed Hindu-Muslim rioting and a village that was predominantly Hindu, turned suddenly Muslim. My family fled its home in Bangladesh and I lost my roots forever. When destinies were drawn and history was rewritten, how is it that my mother’s tears were never mentioned? And yet, more than sixty years later, they continue to flow.”

The female protagonist in Paula’s work assumes a bigger dimension in USA’s Catherine Mosley’s six collages paintings that employ human images and animal forms to convey the stressed notions of the victim and the predator. Her interpretation of ‘wild’, ranges from the natural to the supernatural in subject matter, from the figurative to the abstract in style and from the dreamlike to the gritty in theme. Her works Tree Storm and Goodbye give the impression of surroundings being swept away in a dreamlike structure. Her collages move, shapes tangle and colours whirl in strong currents of abstraction. In yet another work titled Falling Girl, the nude, inverted, and falling female form is symbolic of vague memories of a time gone by. The collage is a woodcut that appears to be embedded in a well-worn piece of cloth.

Says Catherine Mosley: “I first print my collage material using stencil, mono-printing, transfer processes and woodcut and then aim towards the close merging of the paint and paper materials to bring out a display of opacity and translucency.”

While Paula Sengupta’s and Catherine Mosley’s works highlight their extensive background in printmaking, USA’s Maxine Henryson captures simple and archetypal images in her camera’s viewfinder. A freelance photographer who keeps roving between the cultural landscapes of New York City, Vermont, Europe and South Asia , she creates an impeccable balance of figuration and abstraction in her photographs that furnish a narrative that naturally unfolds itself. Her subject matter revolves around using simple and archetypal characters like trees, rivers, clotheslines, women, children, temples, seasons, courtyards, flowers, gardens, curtains, vessels, fences, bedspreads and many more everyday objects.

In one of her series titled Red leaves and Gold Curtains, she explores her perception of the feminine in the world, examining the differences and similarities among cultures. She also traces evidence of divinity, rituals, place, memory and history in the West and East. She says: “These images are my response to the present while mirroring the past. The abstraction of the photographs reflects distance and proximity. The photographs represent intimate moments and bestow a new form of painting that uses photography as a medium.”

Feminism in a bolder form is what marks artist, social worker and founder of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, USA-based Jaishri Abichandani’s works who breaks the shackles of predictability by presenting bold display of fetishized objects like leather whips, dildos, plastic breasts, wire with swarovski crystals. Her works, often called as lingam sculptures are highly ambiguous objects and hover between irony and sincerity, as they are both subversive while being celebratory. Combining certain sex toys (banned in India) with fabricated leather whips and high-Swarovski crystals, the sculptures interrogate patriarchal power centers and the use of religious fundamentalism to mask capitalist and patriarchal strategies. She upsets the notion of male dominance by placing the phallic objects within a larger triangle or Yoni – making the female shape as important and dominant as the male. Other sculptures using many of the same materials interrogate other complex power dynamics, such as a piece titled Roe Vs Wade, named after the US law allowing women to have abortions or the installation made of whips titled Allahu Akbar using the Kufic script from the Iraqi flag of 2008.

Finally, UK’s Sutapa Biswas explores the themes of time, history, gender, race and human condition through her works. Her strongly poetic and visually resonant works derive influences from a wide range of sources including film, art history, literature, and psychoanalytic theory. Her drawings are evocative of her enquiry into the psyche of the feminine subject, and the daily rituals of domestic life. She works in the medium of drawing, painting, film and video that have an uncanny ability to halt the viewer in their tracks.

Says Sutapa Biswas: “Though much time has passed since my journey from the country of my birth to a country that is now my home, the complex relationship that has existed between these two places for centuries now, has given way to a certain poetry that belongs to both of them, which inevitably has consequently entered my psyche. I would also point out that if we as human beings are to be read only as the sum total of the places we inhabit with rigid linearity then the richness of thought and the poetics of space, time, and experience cannot be fully appreciated. In short, we would either presume too much or too little.”

Indeed, a must-visit show with alternating and alternative sensibilities as seen through the eyes of women far apart in space yet connected through their art!

Gallery Espace Brings International Artist Rina Banerjee to town with a solo exhibition titled ‘Allure’

New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents ‘Allure’; a solo exhibition of recent works (acrylic and ink on paper) by internationally renowned Brooklyn-based artist, Rina Banerjee from December 19, 2008 to January 13, 2009 at Gallery Espace, (Level 02), 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

Says Ms. Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “Rina Banerjee’s work mixes Asian and western materials. Powdered spices, glittering sari cloth create a hybrid version of exoticism, one that works not just west to east but in both directions, and has a creepy, spoiled, mutant beauty. Her characteristically mischievous process of transformation of objects and their cultural locations playfully unhinges them from their unique specificity.”

"…...Rina Banerjee’s work is all about excess and colour and has south Indian vibes, it is also about east-west relations, tourism, exoticism and stereotypes..." that’s how New York Times describes the work of the Kolkata-born artist.

Says Rina Banerjee: “There is a long history to the mythologisation of the female figure, body and its vanishing sexuality towards an ungendered old age. Like a dizzying pendulum, we as people find something to mistrust, find fault with, blame, fear and negate that is also the very core of our most tender curiosity. Unlike greed or lust this space delivers, rescues, enlightens and surrenders us to an eternal blissful sanity. Sigmund Freud’s points of referring to the other sex as ‘container’ refers to the womb, this jeweled box, gendered in a trap not yet known.”

Born in 1963, Kolkata, India, Rina Banerjee has lived in the United States since she was a child. Educated at Yale University, School of Art, she currently lives and works in New York City. Her work explores specific colonial moments that reinvent place and identity as complex diasporic experiences. The way she assembles colonial objects, souvenirs and decorative crafts makes the experience of seeing artefacts and history in art making as an entangled process. Their aesthetic and cultural beginnings suggest in particular how the many regional culture affects continue to stain our perceptions of home, the exotic, the foreign and domestic worlds.

Beginning her profession as a material science engineer, one can sense in her artworks the material awareness often mixing the organic and plastic to invite a blurring of our recognition. Says Rina Banerjee, “My sculptures, installations, videos and drawings are inspired by a wide range of mundane objects and home crafts. The metaphors jewel, gold, glitter and net proliferates the visual vocabulary of my work.”

The result one can see offers a new way of seeing culture. Simultaneously preoccupations with the savage, insects, foreign, alien are familiar categories of identity that is also generated in the work. There is also the forbidden prolonged looking that confuses, beguiles and mixes beauty with the grotesque. Another aspect in her artworks are the use of narrative text which decorate the work with meaning and intention that further plays with the idea of artist voice and the aesthetic of exotic beauty, physical illusion of ornamental object as a sign. Her imagery stems from multiple cultural histories, both eastern and western art.

From her sensational debut at the Whitney Biennial 2000, Rina Banerjee has been very successful at her last exhibitions in Tsumari-Echigo’s 3rd Triennial in Japan and PS 1/MoMA. Her works have been in focus in the

Brent Sikema, Bose Pacia Modern Gallery, Debs and Co. Gallery, Bronx Museum, New Museum, and Queens Museum acquiring favorable reviews in Art News, Art Forum and Art in America. Presently her works can be viewed at Mass Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams in an exhibition "Yankee Remix". She has also exhibited abroad in Madrid, Durban, Africa and India.

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For further media enquiries pls contact Poonam Goel @ 9811143131 or Persona @ 41552945-8.

Kalyani Kala Mandir presents ‘Aradhana’

Kalyani Kala Mandir presents ‘Aradhana’ by

Bharatnatyam danseuse Rashmi Khanna

Event: Kalyani Kala Mandir presents ‘Aradhana’, a Bharatnatyam recital by renowned danseuse Rashmi Khanna and her disciples on Sunday, December 7, 2008 at Triveni Kala Sangam, Tansen Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi at 6:30pm.

Aradhana, an expression of the bhakta (disciple) towards the almighty is based on the devotional aspect of the Shringara Rasa.

1. The programme commences with Thodaya Mangalam which is dedicated to Lord Vishnu, the preserver, the one married to Janaki, who took the Narasimha Avatar to destroy Hiranyakashyap, who came as none other than Krishna to live among mortals in order to help rid their troubles.

2. Shlokam: This is a sanskrit shloka from the Krishna Karnamritam. It praises Krishna who is the Lord of all the three worlds and has the power to attract both the gods as well as the kinnaris. His individuality has so many different colours that all the nine emotions and Rasas reside in him.

3. Navarasa: In this piece, the nine emotions or Navarasas shall be depicted through the medium of the different episodes of Lord Rama’s life. It is set to ragammalika , talam aadi. It is a composition of Padmashree Dandayudapanipillai.

4. Meera Bhajan: “ Chalo Man Ganga Jamuna Teer” , as the song suggests, the nayika, Meera, wants to go to the shores of the river Ganges to be united with her lover, Lord Krishna, the one who plays the flute and is accompanied by his brother Balveer, the one who wears the peacock feathered crown and diamond ear drops. Meera wants to bow down on the lotus like feet of her lord and become one with him.

5. Tillana: Tillana is an epitome of pure artistry where the variegated patterns of movements flow in one sheer rapturous symphony creating alluringly sculpturesque dance poses as found in the temples of South India.

Venue: Triveni Kala Sangam, Tansen Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi.

Date: Sunday, December 7, 2008

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Nehru Memorial Museum & Library presents Nehru BAL MELA

New Delhi: Transcending barriers of class, caste and religion, encouraging active involvement with science, nature, culture & history, fostering values of harmonious living in a fun way that makes learning an enjoyable process are the aims with which Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) presents its annual children and youth festival titled Dhanak Din: Living Together in Harmony, a three-day Nehru BAL MELA for children, teachers & parents on November 27, 28 & 30, 2008 at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Teen Murti House, New Delhi.

Woven around the theme of peace, nature and creativity, the fair seeks to be inclusive, earth nurturing, peaceful and celebrates diversity with a wide range of learning oriented fun activities. It is the right opportunity to let your child free and have fun alongwith a deep meaningful engagement with his favourite activity. Dhanak Din, especially designed for the children between the age group of 5-18 years, also encourages the active participation of those who love to work with and for the children. The fair breaks the restraints of ‘channel surfing’ through stalls as a mere spectator but allows a deeper involvement with the participants which makes them co-creators and owners of the event.

Says Ms. Mridula Mukherjee, Director, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library: “The mela simply reiterates that “fun is serious business’. It is, however, not a stand-alone event but the celebration of a longer process of deep engagement which we have encouraged through children and parent workshops throughout the year. For this mela in particular, we have planned a series of events including talks, film screenings, fun games, exhibitions, scientific experiments, nature trails, puppets, magic, theatre and music by and for children.”

While some of the activities require prior registration many others are open to all. Those who wish to participate can choose one registered activity and any number of unregistered/open activities. Children and their parents can easily participates in various open activities like pottery making, clay modeling, toy making, paper craft, free writing, kite flying, mehandi applying, face painting, skipping, charkha weaving, dancing, music and much more.

Children can also volunteer for various registered workshops and events like radio workshop, creative writing, photography, arts, T-shirt painting, science toys, nature walk, history walk, heritage, theatre workshops, handling puppets, learning astronomy and magic etc. Almost every registered activity enables the child to understand the concept thoroughly and proves to be helpful in the long run. For instance the Community Radio Workshop teaches the method of production of radio programs and clears doubts about the basics concept of script writing, voice recording, editing and production. The final product is then shared with the audience in the fair. Comics is another interesting activity that challenges the child to create satire and provides a solution on the day to day issues life. Students can also opt for Heritage & Nature Walk to get a simplified perspective of the historical monuments, flora and fauna around Teen Murti while understanding the significance of history, ecology and city design. Kabaad se Jugaad is another hip activity amongst children that teaches them to experiment and make meaningful use of seemingly useless things. The Science game activities, facilitated by the Nehru Planetarium educate kids about lights, rainbow, solar system etc. The energetic Theatre Workshops are a sure shot method to add confidence to the child’s personality. It not only enhances the creativity but also teaches team spirit. At the same time, this is also an opportunity to view the ongoing exhibition on Bhagat Singh’s life (Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna) that is certain to bring perspective to the revolutionary’s role in modern context.

More significantly, Dhanak Din is designed not as a stand-alone event but a celebration punctuating the longer process of deep engagement that includes workshops and interactions with schools and children and would continue even after the fair. Young people who have demonstrated social leadership will also be the part of fair. Abiding by its pledge of providing a platform to the unprivileged, NMML ensures that kids and students from the remote parts of the country get a fair chance to participate and work hand-in hand with the kids from urban society. These participants are also felicitated with certificates based on their level of participation.

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About Nehru Memorial Museum & Library

Standing true to the spirit, wisdom and legacy of a great visionary Jawaharlal Nehru, the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) is currently engaged in several innovative projects and programs. Besides being a premier center of academic excellence, the NMML has been evolving to be a vibrant and child-friendly place. Addressing the issues and concerns of children, it runs regular activities and events and develops meaningful partnerships with key stakeholders, such as teachers, parents, schools, educators, civil society organizations and government institutions.

The values and principles which Nehru stood for - peace, conflict resolution and dialogue, passionate secularism, equality, love for nature, accessibility, relating and engaging with people – is reflected in the content and design of the mela. This festival of colours and flowers is woven around the themes of harmony, peace, non-violence and diversity. Living together in harmony is the leit motif of the festival.

Gallery Espace participates in the first-ever Asian Contemporary Art Fair, Miami

Gallery Espace participates in the first-ever Asian Contemporary Art Fair, Miami

With Miami poised to host its first-ever international Asian contemporary art fair called ART ASIA from December 4, 2008 to December 7, 2008, one of Delhi’s leading galleries Gallery Espace announces its participation by taking work of three bright artists steadily climbing up the charts. Art Asia, Miami is slated to take place in the prestigious Wynwood Art District, located on NE 31st Street and Midtown Boulevard.

As the fair is a celebration of contemporary Asian art as a worldwide phenomenon, Gallery Espace has carefully selected works of three contemporary Indian artists to showcase at their booth. Works to be showcased at Art Asia Miami include NeoCamouflage, a new media installation by Vibha Galhotra, photographs from Ravi Agarwal’s latest series An Other Place, and satirical works on canvas and paper by Manjunath Kamath.

VIBHA GALHOTRA

Vibha Galhotra, Neo-Camouflage(Installation with digital prints, life-size mannequins & Fabric, 2008)

New Delhi based artist Vibha Galhotra is an ardent catcher of double speak. For her the urban sites are the realms of this double speak; they speak of progress and sell a Utopian dream. Each Utopia within it carries a dystopia, a suppressed zone of miseries and chaos. The fast pace of globalization and corporatization makes the individual in a society so giddy that he/she fails to realize these hints and double meanings.

In her work titled 'Camouflage' (and also 'Neo-Camouflage') we see the pictures of urban shanties becoming camouflaged clothes of the man living in peripheries. Camouflaging is a technique of survival for the lesser beings. But, seen in a different context, it is the uniform of power/state/army. Vibha uses this double meaning of camouflage as a medium and source to express how the people in peripheries are succumbed to their own shanty-ness.

RAVI AGARWAL

Ravi Agarwal, (From the series An Other Place, Archival Inkjet Prints, 2008)

Trained as an engineer and an environmentalist in the non-governmental sector, Ravi works tirelessly to suggest constructive ways in which burgeoning 'development' in the city can interact with the 'natural'. As a documentary photographer, Ravi's focus has been on environmental and labour issues and the changing face of urbanity. In bringing together the 'found' and the 'constructed', in the series of composite images-'Urbanscapes', and 'Mechanical Man', Metal Man', Ravi expands the possibilities offered by the photographic lens. The documentary and the performative collaborate in images that speak of dislocation, the alienation of the self, and the loss contained in uninhibited contemporary urban development. Delhi, the city that Ravi inhabits, seems eager to shed its past in its urgent pursuit of the future. As the city's richly layered histories are replaced by a temperamental commercial plasticity, Ravi's images serve as a residue of that which will soon be lost forever. However, the vibrant colours of the natural world seep into these photographs of desolate spaces and abandoned debris converting them into images of hope rather than loss.

'An Other Place' offers, as the title of the series suggests, an alternative space, a site that yearns to re-establish relationships with the organic, with that which is less ephemeral, a place where there is the possibility of "rediscovering a personal ecology".

MANJUNATH KAMATH

Manjunath Kamath, Igo Icons (Watercolour on paper, 16.5 x 14 in each (a set of 6))

Manjunath Kamath is a chronicler of our times. Like a skilful historian, he creates visual stories, constantly bringing images from the past and present. He, in his works traverses through memories, culturally accumulated visual facts and collective consciousness. Trained in sculpture and visual design, Manjunath in a sense designs his works with a lot of theatricality. Disparate images are culled from folk stories and maxims only to be juxtaposed with the familial and the familiar images.

By contrasting and juxtaposing images, Manjunath creates a visual vocabulary, which is particularly fresh in the Indian contemporary art scene. He narrates history with a jester's wisdom and vision. Lampoons and satires a play a predominant part in his works and this kind of trivializing of the past and the immediate becomes a powerful tool in Manjunath's hands for generating a visual discourse that goes against the norms of high-brow-ist aesthetic negotiations. A rebel in thoughts and creativity, Manjunath presents one of the unique features of Indian contemporary art.

Art Asia attempts to highlights the impact of Asian art on the art market in the U.S. and Europe and shows how over the past decade, artists from China, Japan, India, and South Korea have become among the most important of their generation, with major museum exhibitions, auctions, and wide media coverage. Art Asia aims to communicate the rich and exciting experience of South Asian Arts to the widest possible audience.