artists comments

Aeneas Wilder

Scotland

In this project, "Bereavaru kandante nammanu naave kandokolluvudu" Aeneas employs text as a play of one's perceptions which can easily become distorted by each individuals mental projections. In this case he has commissioned a billboard to display the faces of two Bollywood film stars. Their pupils have been cut away to create a negative space enabling the viewer to see through the eyes of the painted figures. The text on the billboard, which serves as the title, is a quote translated into Kannada, from the poem "To a Louse" by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, which reads "to see ourselves as others see us".

Baiju Parthan

India

Baiju Parthan's art practice revolves around mass media and information technology. He probes how information streams alter and re-construct our perception of reality. His works range from painting to interactive installation using video data projections.

The current project is an interactive installation incorporating a video data projection that explores the theme of news feeds and is titled FEED- What You See Is What You Get. The artist is suggesting that the regular streaming of images of military activity as peace keepers and liberators through news channels into our living rooms is gradually altering our perceptions about the military. He feels that these news feeds that we consume on a daily basis "naturalizes" or coerces us into accepting military presence and the associated security drills as an essential ingredient of everyday reality.

Betsabee Romero

Mexico

Betsabee says Culture is not a sedentary process, we move in a symbolic traffic of values to choose what we want to perceive. This abstract fabric of scars protects our own beloved principles so that we are not so damaged by urban speed. Culture is a vehicle moving as fast as the powerful obstacles that we encounter in our daily life on a symbolic freeway made by the others.

She has been working with vehicles since 1997 to depict modernity. Each vehicle in her work takes on a particular identity in a myriad of cultures.

Dagmar Keller & Martin Witter

Germany

The relation of artificiality and naturalness, reality and staging, fact and fiction stands thematically in the center of the artistic work of Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer.
In their projects they deal with alienation processes, people at the cultural and social periphery and the crowing penetration of the social life through staged realities. For the video installation "a few free standing units" the artists created a "moving collage" out of contrasting types of architecture that are magazine cutouts, photographs the artist took during their stay in India and photocopies out of books. On two stacked tabletops the cutouts are building a dense cityscape. A video camera is pointed at this model and directly connected with a video projector which projects the picture onto the opposite wall. The viewer is asked to turn a hand wheel which rotates the stacked tabletops and so the projected picture is set in motion.

Inder Salim

India

Inder challenges the viewer by emphasizing society's injustices. He asks the viewer to become acutely aware of how one's surroundings function on a daily basis. The artist often places himself in the role of a humble servant. It is to demonstrate an equality to be shared amongst all people that have been replaced by social order. His performances are an attempt to disable the order of elitist hierarchies. In his recent work, the artist has journeyed from the slums of Bangalore to the gallery space to produce an installation called the "primordial Icon" (formaldehyde solution, jar with a black lid, shit). He has also constructed a black and white 20 x 30 inch poster called "we are all Women's Issues". In addition, there is a 9 ft by 4 ft. banner called "Generate Less Art Garbage". During the workshop, a collaborative performance with a fellow Khoj artist, Laura Martin, has been done within the vicinity of the toilets in the gallery. This performance is called "Know Thy Self".

Jehangir Jani

India

Jehangir is concerned with the socio-political climate in the country. The concept is that of memory and home. His work emanates the urgency of the form. In this project, cement serves as a medium for an unchartered exploration of the outdoors. By constructing basic geometrical forms, their aesthetics in question creates a contrast to the thick bush of bamboo adjacent to the work. It is cement and earth: geometry and architecture. The medium is established and takes shape within its own limitations. This piece speaks of the repetition of form that echoes a minimalist approach.

Karl Antao

India

Karl's work is a tribute to riot victims in relief camps. The work consists of an air filled water mattress covered with synthetic sieve material placed over twenty four knives, questioning the purpose of relief through material gains against the emotional and mental security through metaphors. He uses satire to question the purpose of relief camps.

Kazue Sato

Japan

This project involves a familiar element taken from the landscape of India by using bamboo. The bamboo stalks are sliced into thin strips and woven to form a 33 feet long wave shaped basket that almost serves as an appendage to the architectural space. In this installation the basket represents a balance between the outdoor and indoor space.

Kazue's work creates a dialogue between negative and positive space. Her installations are composed by household elements like containers. She negotiates between the architectural space; negative and positive as well as outdoor and indoor spaces. She has used materials such as stone, marble, and flat bars of steel in her previous works.

Laura Martin

France

Laura says, "My personal and family story led me to discover and love India. Following my recent visit to Chennai and Delhi, I decided to initiate a project about dowry and love, in collaboration with (Vimochana) a women's rights organization"

Laura is questioning her identity in the garb of Indian wedding sari. Her concern for the dowry victims in India has led her to express the gravity of the situation in a subtle way. The woman-to-woman solidarity, irrespective of Nation/Culture is obvious in her work which is monumental in that sense. The viewer sees an image of the artist with shoulders shrugged and hands in exclamation. Her images are printed as in a billboard advertisement questioning the role of dowry as a consumerist transaction where the bride becomes a part of business.

Manjula Priyadarshana

Sri Lanka

Manjula's work considers the contrast between the red oxide facade of the Government museum (colonial architecture) and the stonewall which acts as a stoppage between the two buildings. His intention here is to connect the two divisions of the landscape through terracotta pots and the fabric that imitates the color of the building (as well as works as an "Indian cultural element") above the water body. Metaphorically the reflection acts as a reminder of a colonial era in the south Asian region. Red half circles floating side by side on the water acts as a rim of screen. This is to lead the viewer to follow the reflection of the building on the water.

His earlier works comprise of figurative paintings where layering evokes nostalgia of memories and a space of transience. His paintings also connect to elements of large billboards. His recent works were influenced by the visual properties of digital medium translated into three-dimensional works.

Melina Berkenwald

Argentina

Melina says, "This work was triggered by my first visit to India, and my encounter with the Auto-Rickshaw and the traffic of Bangalore city. I was instantly fascinated by the contrast between the traffic (the noise of horns, the speed of the cars and the traffic jams) and the peaceful landscapes that are painted at the back of these three-wheel taxis
These landscapes decorating these mobile homes are like dreams expressing desires and illusions of tranquility; dreams that might be reached in one of the journeys or might bring relief when other passengers or drivers look at them while they are stuck in the traffic."

Nan Kushiya Shyam

India

This work depicts the creation of the world as Shiva gives life to a bird that generates visions as it travels around the globe. Nan Khushiya Shyam uses the stories told by her father to narrate events that take place from one context to the other. In this workshop she has worked with Uday Pusam who assisted her in painting.

Naniah C.R.

India

Nanaiah has used a garland of plastic flowers robed on a digital print of a flower. This layered image with the artificial fragrance speaks of a violation subjected to the image of the actual flower. This work is an attempt at questioning the changing sensibilities of a consumer society where "Durability" "Long lasting" "Washable" "Affordable" becomes the punch line.

His paintings lie in the realm of appropriating pop imagery such as the Coca Cola logo collaged into dense architectural spaces. In crammed domestic environments, the logo is integrated into a composed space through patterned repetition. He derives various aspects of ubiquitous images that are often encountered in the public realm and subverts the meaning of it.

Prabhavathi Meppayil

India

Prabha uses the traditional technique of painting with natural pigments on lime gesso. She emphasizes the purity and intensity of surface and color, working within the language that demands discipline and the process. By reclaiming the medium to subtly work with the fragments of nature. She works with photographic Gum-bichromate process that uses sunlight to develop the image. Thus, capturing the sunlight at different times of the day in subtle photo stenciled images of the objects. Her earlier works incorporate poignant moments with people, architecture and living creatures. Her small interventions are captured using linear elements that suggest poetic moments and sustain her faith with fragility.

Raghavendra Rao

India

Raghavendra's work involves constructing a space that is like an extension of the existing wall. He turns the space inside out, enclosing a painted lush forest for the viewer. A small peephole that focuses on another reality disrupts this utopia.

He has moved from a painting background into new media and material. Working from an expressionist painting language, he focuses on the tensions of his environment and spaces of conflict that affect him. He has been extending these concerns into new modes of expression like site-specific installation and video.

Rajani K. Shettar

India

Ranjani's works uses the tradition of stitching mirrors on textiles to ward of the evil eye. She creates a sculptural spiral to frame the embellished jute textile that reflects the landscape in a kaleidoscopic view. In this process, she creates a work that encompasses others, and changes dimensions when shifted to another venue.

Ranjani says "Making of my work and putting them up for display is much like everyday activity. I find a vent to my other skills into sculpture. The skills I learnt at the Art College and the others I imbibed from my mother are no longer far from each other. I find myself doubly equipped to use sculptural and sartorial skills together."

Sakarin Krue-On

Thailand

The artists interests lie in utilizing the materiality of medias to transform spaces through scale and quantity, His works fill and dominate spaces with a subtly gives to the objects he creates

When I first arrived in India, I saw a man carrying a plastic pot on his shoulder. I realised that this land embodied many remarkable contrasts: a rich ancient culture and eastern philosophy, but also a place thriving in a modern culture of industrial, modern technology. There is a big contrast between old and new forms of culture.
However, among many changes and developments, there is a balance that takes place. Like the clay pot and the plastic pot, the form remains the same, but the way it is made has changed. In my artwork, I use plastic pots appropriated from a modern context. I move from the context of modernity towards nature by transforming these plastic pots into a lotus flowers. Through this action, my intention is to bring the work back to nature.

Sheela Gowda

India

The grey outer wall of the museum, rising uninterrupted to a height of 45 feet was the site of this installation, back to back to the paintings of the late artist Venkatappa housed within. Grey wooden frames, with metal mesh stretched tight across each, were fixed shelf like on the 30 feet wide wall to architecturally parallel the parapet projections of the adjacent sides. Photographs (already a recording of a moment), which I selected from my personal album, newspapers and of nature, were first rendered in water colour. These paintings were then scanned, printed in black and white and finally presented under glass of similar size on the mesh frames. By this process I wished to emphasize the emotional and factual discrepancy in the receiving and retrieving of a moment being viewed from another time and physical context: The familiarity of a family or social get-together, the charged emotion of a scene of mourning get filtered and distanced. Placed beside them silhouetted football players could be rioters; their gestures of triumph appear as aggression.
Marking the passage of time even as one viewed it, incense material, rolled out as flat shapes and placed around the images under glass, burnt themselves out slowly over a period of two days, leaving a residue of ash forms on the mesh surface. Nature, supporting my intervention, became an accomplice: Dramatic shadows of the frames and its contents fell on the grey wall intermingling with the shadows and reflection of the trees and water in the vicinity and changing as the sun moved across the sky. A moment experienced became distinct from the one before.

Shiva Prasad

India

A painter committed to village and small-town life, Shiva Prasad's realism began with thinly layered, rough-tender portraits amid environments verging on the abstract. During the subsequent period of thick, impassioned pigmentation he conjured meetings between fragments of different realities- rural, urban, traditional indigenous and global- to enhance from the actual sense of their simultaneous attraction and clash.

For an artist whose intense paintings hold his identification with the subjects the present installation project may be new to him as a medium.
The large wooden door is covered with a multitude of U-clamps, Shiva Prasad is asking the visitor to pick-up a lock from a heap nearby, lock his or her unwanted memories and throw away the key where it can not be found.
Thus, sealed behind the door, the negative energies of people are hoped to leave then so that their positive potential becomes stimulated.

Sigit Pius

Indonesia

Projecting from inside out, the viewer is presented with different facets of the artist. As he explores his identity, the artist has collected a series of photographs displaying an extensive family as people who the artist has attributed a given identity connected by several bonds. In his current project, he orchestrates a series of nine rickshaws each containing three passengers traveling to different points of the city. The event signifies an interaction between the passenger and the driver. The attempt is to bring people together and create a dialogue amongst an enclosed and open setting that offers the potential for a number of intimate discussions.

Suresh Jayaram

India

A readymade garden with the granite wall background raises issues about artificial landscape of the city. The self-portrait on the armchair focuses on locating the self in the context of the museum wall.
Suresh's preoccupation is nature in the urban context in Bangalore. In his previous works he communicates with the viewer by using images of western paintings and instigates the dialogue between the city and nature.

Tanya Preminger

Israel

In her work, Tanya is interested in depicting mother earth as the human body. The colored materials on the surface symbolize the offerings of nature to the human kind, the body glands - milk, blood and oil.