Words like dimorphism, LiDAR scanning, air-brushing, stop motion animation and code-generated video float in the air as visitors deftly negotiate the hustle and bustle of the art world. At the India Art Fair in Delhi, which opened its doors to VIP preview on February 9 before inviting in the public on the weekend, digital artworks are speaking aloud words that are increasingly appealing to art connoisseurs.
Artist Shrimanti Saha, an alumna of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the MS University, Vadodara, uses stop motion animation in her work, Alternate Evolutions, a special art project by the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art (FICA). Two of Saha's stop motion animation films in the project, titled Secret Matriarchy and Clash of Perspectives, explore alternate stories of evolution and other ways of seeing.
"Saha's work is a painterly exploration of animation, thinking about movement, sound and stories, and ways of telling them," says Vidya Shivadas, director, FICA, which helps emerging artists extend their creativity towards building better communities.
Saha, who won the FICA Amol Vadehra Art Grant in 2015 to create Alternate Evolutions (exhibited for the first time at the India Art Fair this year), quotes American professor Donna J. Haraway, an expert on science and technology studies, to amplify her work: "It matters what matters we use to think other matter with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with... It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories."
Multidisciplinary artist and electronic musician Varun Desai's digital installation at the art fair, is titled Dimorphism, a word which means existence of two distinct types of individuals in the same species. In Desai's work, code-generated art is derived using hand-drawn animation, sound synthesis and 3-D LiDAR (light, detection and ranging) scanning. Desai is part of three artists from Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata brought together by Apple to create a digital residency hub at the India Art Fair this year.
Works about words and language abound at the art fair this year. Artist Ranbir Kaleka, whose major works combine painting and video projection, articulates the meaning of polysemous (a word meaning the co-existence of many possible meanings of a word) in his digital artwork, Breath. Kaleka's work on multiple monitors uses video to bring breath to the still images of a painted body.
"After Covid-19 pandemic, breath has been so much on our consciousness," says Kaleka. "In many languages around the world, the word for breath and soul is the same. Breath formed the basis for the Black Lives Matter movement. In this video, the ambience sound is composed of I can't breathe, the words of American Eric Garner choked to death by police in 2014, pollution, and the sound of pain, torture, sneezing, cough, ambulance siren and even hiccups," he adds about his new work, sponsored by creative online platform, MASH, which explores the intersections of art, craft, design, architecture and fashion.
Technology is aiding artists in expression without altering their basic practices. "Even if one is painting a flower or tree using technology, the meanings of life one wants to convey won't change, but they can get another dimension," explains Kaleka. "The viewing protocol will change."
Accessibility to art is undergoing changes too. This year, the art fair, for the first time, has sign language art walks every day at 4 pm. "Accessibility and inclusion is becoming more and more integrated with the larger planning of the fair. We expect a wider group of visitors with diverse abilities this year," says Mumbai-based access consultant Siddhant Shah.
Some artists have put labour, the central element of creativity, on focus. Anshu Singh, an MFA in textile design from Benares Hindu University, Varanasi, has created life jackets from jute to portray the labour of people who carry potato sacks on their back. "I collected used potato sacks from Varanasi for the work," says Singh whose installation is a reminder of the labour of essential workers during the pandemic along with other emergency services.
Birender Kumar Yadav, another emerging artist, uses terracotta to create tools workers handle in brick kilns in Mirzapur near Varanasi. "These are artists who talk about the real issues of India like labour, gender inequality and secularism through their works," says artist-activist Prabhakar Kamble, who has curated the show of six Ambedkarite artists, including Singh and Yadav, at the art fair.
Confectionery company Cadbury has a booth at the India Art Fair for the first time this year to aid its campaign to use digital art by children for contributing to the charity, Save the Children. Painted by children aged five to 10 years from across the country, all 15,000 digital works have been converted into NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to aid in the campaign.
Also among the works at the fair, which has seven international participating galleries this year, are those by iconic artists M.F. Husain (Horses) and Andy Warhol (Mao). The DAG gallery, which is opening its new gallery in Delhi with an exhibition on masterpieces of Indian modern art this weekend, has mounted 20 of the exhibition's 50 works at the India Art Fair. On view is the first commissioned work of Raja Ravi Varma from 1870, a family portrait that earned him then a princely sum of Rs 265.
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