Profiling Pooja Sood

Helmut Dick, Neheru Pace Delhi, as a part of Khoj 2006 Public Art Residency.
33 Helmut Dicks are visiting New Dehli moving sculpture, 2007. After arriving with a transport vehicle Dick started to unload and build up standing cardboard images of himself. The cut –out prints have slightly confused and amazed looking facial-expressions and wear the same clothes like the ‘real’ working Dick is wearing. After a total of 32 figures were set up Dick started to reload ‘himself’ back into the transporter… 

A Pooja Sood profile  i had written in 2006 monsoons...then as sr. editor mattersofart.com...it has been seven years, so much has changed...so much has not. The Passion To Explore mattersofart.com takes a look at the energy that appears to benchmark Pooja Sood’s curatorial skills, adding value to a still-nascent profession When mattersofart.com took the editorial decision to re-think the ‘Artist of the month’ and reposition it as ‘In Focus’, the attempt was to be able to broaden the possibilities and enable one to feature personalities who have been making a difference to the course of contemporary Indian art. It was also to be able to look beyond artists and ‘to bring in focus’ practices which are exciting and cutting edge. Profiling Pooja Sood, as the first non-artist ‘In Focus’ was initially prompted by two back-to-back curations that happened in mid-September at KHOJ (Public Art Residency) and then at the Apeejay Media Gallery (Ghosts in the Machine and other Tales, video, sound, animation and interactive media). It is difficult to remember two large ‘alternative’ art ‘event/spectacles’ curated in near simultaneity by one curator in India. As one continued to be clued to her, one realised that her intensity of programming just continues. At KHOJ, Sood followed up her summer residency by curating Vasuda Tazur and Brendan Jamison in continuation with its rendezvous with public art and her engagement in trying to locate the new genre in the Indian urban context. KHOJ has only just now wound up a Sound Art Residency and is about to explore ‘Water’ as a medium before it goes back to re-interrogating Performance Art. An exhausting load of programming by any standard, and if there is something that defines Pooja Sood’s curatorial practice, it is her ‘bundle of energy’ and with it the desire to push margins...sometimes with all that energy. Every time one attempts to label her as a curator, there is a resistance that creeps up one’s fingers as they write.  If one has to adequately analyse her functional ‘role’ in Indian contemporary art, to bracket her as a curator is to take the easy way out. This ignores the energy gone into institution building and their pedagogical value. And if one is to ignore the energy, then Pooja Sood becomes shallow as an ‘exciting curator”; but it is not possible to ignore her as a fundraiser and institution builder. Casting her is a task that demands a critical fineness, which makes it enticing. Through the late 1990s when traditional institutions, particularly those not supporting a certain right wing culture, were winding down, especially in the context of culture, Sood carried forward the experience she had gained from Eicher Gallery, playing a pivotal role in structuring KHOJ, and nursing it to make it the hub of alternative art practices. Underlying all the curations (de-curatrions?) at KHOJ is Pooja’s passionate agenda to explore something new.  Critically speaking, one can disagree with the framework within which she operates: urbanism is understood and practiced in both KHOJ and Apeejay in a manner, which is elitist, if one goes by certain definitions of elitism. Even at the micro-project level, there are possibilities to ‘fault’ the presentations of the KHOJ projects, the manner in which they are conceptualised, and the criticism it does not allow. But then, it is also possible to dis-acknowledge the restrictions within which she operates.  She is arguably the best fund-raiser for experimental art projects and the manner in which she has channelised her skills to “constantly push for something new…something exciting”. In fact, this ‘push’ for the exciting is what marks her curatorial practice and her contribution to the contemporary Indian art scene. The kind of artists she has in introduced and nurtured is a very good indication of her curatorial skills (if one looks at curation as being able to sense and put together art practitioners in a certain way). At this point, there is also a certain flourish, a certain coming to age, which reflects in the work that she does. “After 40 you just don’t care” , that kind of hedonism is tempered by her realisation that for her to really exploit pedagogical value additions she is capable of making in contemporary Indian art, she needs to pay heed to the academic interest within her. She needs to revisit all the possibilities that she has only skimmed through till now and explore the full impact of the ‘mediamatic’ and the ‘practitional’ explorations she has indulged in. But then, Pooja will always be driven by her ‘bundle of energy’ and ‘going slow’ is not her ‘style’.

A Pooja Sood profile  i had written in 2006 monsoons...then as sr. editor mattersofart.com...it has been seven years, so much has changed...so much has not.

The Passion To Explore

mattersofart.com takes a look at the energy that appears to benchmark Pooja Sood’s curatorial skills, adding value to a still-nascent profession

When mattersofart.com took the editorial decision to re-think the ‘Artist of the month’ and reposition it as ‘In Focus’, the attempt was to be able to broaden the possibilities and enable one to feature personalities who have been making a difference to the course of contemporary Indian art. It was also to be able to look beyond artists and ‘to bring in focus’ practices which are exciting and cutting edge.

Profiling Pooja Sood, as the first non-artist ‘In Focus’ was initially prompted by two back-to-back curations that happened in mid-September at KHOJ (Public Art Residency) and then at the Apeejay Media Gallery (Ghosts in the Machine and other Tales, video, sound, animation and interactive media). It is difficult to remember two large ‘alternative’ art ‘event/spectacles’ curated in near simultaneity by one curator in India. As one continued to be clued to her, one realised that her intensity of programming just continues. At KHOJ, Sood followed up her summer residency by curating Vasuda Tazur and Brendan Jamison in continuation with its rendezvous with public art and her engagement in trying to locate the new genre in the Indian urban context. KHOJ has only just now wound up a Sound Art Residency and is about to explore ‘Water’ as a medium before it goes back to re-interrogating Performance Art. An exhausting load of programming by any standard, and if there is something that defines Pooja Sood’s curatorial practice, it is her ‘bundle of energy’ and with it the desire to push margins...sometimes with all that energy.

Every time one attempts to label her as a curator, there is a resistance that creeps up one’s fingers as they write.  If one has to adequately analyse her functional ‘role’ in Indian contemporary art, to bracket her as a curator is to take the easy way out. This ignores the energy gone into institution building and their pedagogical value. And if one is to ignore the energy, then Pooja Sood becomes shallow as an ‘exciting curator”; but it is not possible to ignore her as a fundraiser and institution builder. Casting her is a task that demands a critical fineness, which makes it enticing.

Through the late 1990s when traditional institutions, particularly those not supporting a certain right wing culture, were winding down, especially in the context of culture, Sood carried forward the experience she had gained from Eicher Gallery, playing a pivotal role in structuring KHOJ, and nursing it to make it the hub of alternative art practices. Underlying all the curations (de-curatrions?) at KHOJ is Pooja’s passionate agenda to explore something new. 

Critically speaking, one can disagree with the framework within which she operates: urbanism is understood and practiced in both KHOJ and Apeejay in a manner, which is elitist, if one goes by certain definitions of elitism. Even at the micro-project level, there are possibilities to ‘fault’ the presentations of the KHOJ projects, the manner in which they are conceptualised, and the criticism it does not allow. But then, it is also possible to dis-acknowledge the restrictions within which she operates. 

She is arguably the best fund-raiser for experimental art projects and the manner in which she has channelised her skills to “constantly push for something new…something exciting”. In fact, this ‘push’ for the exciting is what marks her curatorial practice and her contribution to the contemporary Indian art scene. The kind of artists she has in introduced and nurtured is a very good indication of her curatorial skills (if one looks at curation as being able to sense and put together art practitioners in a certain way).

At this point, there is also a certain flourish, a certain coming to age, which reflects in the work that she does. “After 40 you just don’t care” , that kind of hedonism is tempered by her realisation that for her to really exploit pedagogical value additions she is capable of making in contemporary Indian art, she needs to pay heed to the academic interest within her. She needs to revisit all the possibilities that she has only skimmed through till now and explore the full impact of the ‘mediamatic’ and the ‘practitional’ explorations she has indulged in. But then, Pooja will always be driven by her ‘bundle of energy’ and ‘going slow’ is not her ‘style’.