Changing Skin

Artists: Anju Dodiya, Jehangir Jani, Mansi Bhatt, Navjot Altaf and Sonia Khurana
Discussant: Gita Chadha
In collaboration with The Fine Art Company, Mumbai

November 27, 2010 | 6.30 pm
Goethe Hall, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

The works by the artists included in the exhibition “changing skin” curated by Marta Jakimowicz revolve around conceptual and aesthetic strategies that involve assuming other personalities, hybrid imagery and altering the surface of things. These strategies, on the one hand, belong to the structure of metaphor, necessary for art to create a world parallel to reality in order to empathize with or critique it and express its experience, while the artist is always present in the artwork which interprets, hence layers and changes, the actual. On the other hand, such properties remain intrinsic in a reality which constantly mutates, contradicts itself and accommodates or encompasses the contradictions, the globalised today carrying elements of the anyway composite past. Although all art-making accepts these paradigms in some measure, the particular artists were chosen for the show because they foreground and make evident the use of those paradigms in order to probe and comment on issues and sensations of complex, ambiguous or radically altering identity, both personal and collective, concerning intimate recognitions along with gender, political, idea-related and economical ones. The show focuses on the intertwining of culture and the body through the means of masquerade or superimposition, hybridisation and altering the surface of objects, so bringing a frequent recourse to performance and installation vocabulary in video-based images as well as paintings, prints and sculptures which often locate themselves on the edge of different media.

In the panel discussion, the artists will converse about their art practices while responding to curatorial positions/ideas via aesthetic devices and the possibilities of artist interventions/curation in the contemporary context keeping the exhibition “changing skin” in mind.

Anju Dodiya is considered among the most important contemporary painters in India.

Jehangir Jani is a self-taught artist who works with different media like sculpture, ceramics, fibreglass and sheet metal.

The work of Mansi Bhatt functions within the mode of performative photography while often lending itself to sculptural and cinematic transformation.

Navjot Altaf is a distinguished painter, sculptor, installation artist and filmmaker.

Sonia Khurana’s art practice embraces areas in-between video, elements of performance, text, photography, drawing and installation

Gita Chadha is a sociologist and her areas of interest are science studies, women’s studies, cultural studies and post-colonial studies. She has worked with women artists and poets on several interdisciplinary projects.

The curator, Marta Jakimowicz will be present at the program. This program is organized in collaboration with The Fine Art Company, Mumbai.