What is Contemporary Indian Art / what is contemporary art in India

Concept note for 33rd issue of art&deal magazine

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Thursday, 2 September 2010 at 21:17

In the title, India, contemporary and art get repeated. Through this we hope to draw your attention to the need to revisit these terms. Contemporary Indian art has become a brand. Artists and curators who’ve been a part of important shows abroad, in their PR and press have explicitly claimed to represent the best of Indian art. Those curators have gone on to forsake any responsibility to represent India. This is very close to how BCCI went on to tell the Supreme Court that it was just a club and had no obligations to represent the country. Like what ‘contemporary Indian art’ is slowly getting, the BCCI has a near monopoly over cricket production and viewership; so various cricket tournaments which are not recognized by the BCCI, simply get erased from the history of Indian cricket. The issue is positioned from a concern that something similar might be unfolding in the sphere of art in India.

We are living at a time in which, like in many other times, the word contemporary and the word India stand for fragmented realities and imaginations. This issue seeks to examine both these notions through the prism of art practices. Though we begin from the location of Art, we hope to also have a substantial dialogue with the location of arts. The discussions generated by the e-flux issue on ‘what is contemporary art,’ are not really applicable to our concerns. It primarily addresses cultural situations that are more homogenous and art that already has a well understood social meaning.

India is acknowledged to be one of the most culturally and politically fragmented time spaces in the world. It is being slowly acknowledged that it is in India that a truly post-colonial situation is unfolding. Art in India is still not easily understood, both as a positioning and as an aesthetic activity. As one talks to the various super star artists in the country, one hears how their families, relatives, villages and sometimes spouses don’t understand what they are doing and the world they are engaged in. yes, it’s true, that this world has gained a lot of frequent flier miles lately, but does that make this world culturally superior?

Unless we begin a sustained engagement which is informed by methodologies of subaltern history writing, it  might be just too late to rescue the rich heritage of art practices in the country that exists right now.
In truth this issue is also inspired by the last Biennale Seminar which was thematically focused on ‘reimagining Asia’. During that seminar, I sat and wondered how would be to start reimagining India. Thus the conceptualization of this issue carries forwards a lot of learning that happened during this seminar.
The spread of Maoist influence has made Lu Jie’s Long March Project very relevant. It unfolds possibilities in center-periphery relationships that might just be very significant. About 30% of the country refuses to be with the nation state or is in serious conflict with it. Then there are other pockets like Gujarat and Mumbai that are claiming a hyper identity for themselves that is often coming into conflict with the identity foundations on which the country stands. Moreover, the kind of schism that exists between metropolitan pockets and the agrarian heartlands makes one wonder what the contemporary reality of India is.
We have taken to the ‘folk art versus contemporary art’ hierarchy like fish to water. Wonder what is it that connects us to the western upper-class that created this hierarchy and made it intrinsic to their cultural identity. Is it by chance that various pockets of the country look at us as colonizers? How do we re-visit this concept/metaphor called art in a manner that it stays relevant to the contemporary realities of the country?
Over the last two issues, the Art & Deal editorial staff has opened up the magazine to art and art practices which exist outside galleries and other mainstream institutionalized spaces that are dominating the meaning and course of Contemporary Indian Art. In one sense the previous two issues were a bit of a research for this one. There are certain proposals one seeks to explore:
·         In an attempt to begin thinking with a clean slate and come around the folk vs. Art hierarchy, can we use the terms Contemporary Urban Art of India and Contemporary Rural Art instead.
·         The Lalit Kala Academy as an institution has made itself redundant as a discourse generating agent. Since the 90’s there has been a lament that the government is completely dysfunctional in terms of supporting ‘forward moving’ art practices. One forgets that Lalit Kala like any institution is made of people, and those people are us. Either as artists working in Garhi, or visitors of the gallery, or applicants for scholarships, writers for the journals etc. if one looks at the Sahitya Kala Academy, which constitutionally is a twin of Lalit Kala, one sees support for the most radical voices in literature, especially the vernacular. To blame an intangible entity called the ‘government’ is a kind of escapism.
·         What is celebrated as the new contemporary Indian art is the least understood by the public at large. Discussing this notion of the public has become intellectually unfashionable post the 80’s. Is Art mirroring the worst phase of the post-90’s neo-liberal India? Apart from pockets of Latin America and Africa, India is the only country where the distance between hyper-cosmopolitan plushness and a farmer’s suicide is only a five hour drive.