Reading art as a lived format at 8th Delhi Contemporary Art Week

New Delhi, Sep 3 (PTI) In Priyanshi S' curatorial vision for “Taqiya Kalam”, one doesn’t stand facing the art but cohabitate it, as she breaks figurative walls of the white cube structure to create a collector’s home with pieces of contemporary art from the walls to the washroom and from the couch to the cupboard.

Designed by Amrita Guha and Joya Nandurdikar of Untitled Design, the exhibition reimagines a gallery space through the lens of domesticity at the Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW) at Bikaner House here.

The 8th edition of DCAW, an alliance of six Delhi-based galleries, is showcasing a selection of works by established and emerging artists from India and the broader subcontinent.

Walking from room to room, one can check the date in Richa Arya’s calendar made of iron sheets as an archive against the violence of forgetting, reflect upon the horrors of female repression in Tayeba Begum Lipi’s stilettos fashioned out of stainless steel razor blades, or simply ponder over the unnatural blueness of Amit Ambalal’s playful langurs.

There are, however, no name tags to connect the art with the artist, as Priyanshi puts her faith in the practice of “learning to read art in a lived format”.

“We have a tendency of going and first reading the name of the artist rather than actually thinking about the visual element because we are used to reading text, we are not used to reading the visual.

“It is a fight against the art world that is used to reading the text and not visual. I want people to read the visuals and read it in a lived format,” the curator told PTI.

She added that one can learn to read art over time, just the way one learns to read a new language.

The curator creates the bathroom as an intimate space but not without the politics of it, as Sunil Gupta’s photographs with subtle queer themes and Chandan Bez Baruah’s woodcut prints, titled ‘A Place Called Home’, reflect back at his native state of Assam and the issues of urbanisation, migration and identity.

“Chandan Bez Barua looks at the Northeast and their identity. It is a temporal home and people living in Assam engage with NRC and they have been having that problem for the last 15 years and more.” One of Gupta’s photos feature two men in a conversation with two policemen, another black and white image shows historian Saleem Kidwai in a joyful embrace with the photographer in the backdrop of Qutb Minar.

“Here we have what might seem like a simple interaction of two men with two cops, but this was in the 80s or the 90s. So two men being close to each other could raise some uncomfortable questions. These both are stories of having dealt with the state players in different ways,” Priyanshi added.

“Taqiya Kalam” features a total of 18 artists, including Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai, Shashank Peshawaria, Wahida Ahmed, Chitra Ganesh, Purvai Rai, Khadim Ali, Ketaki Sarpotdar, Moonis Ijlal, Sajan Mani, Ashfika Rahman, and Shailesh BR.

The themes of identity, belonging, memory, migration, and gender expand onto DCAW’s main exhibition with elaborate showcases of more than 70 artists by the host galleries - Blueprint 12, Exhibit 320, Latitude 28, Gallery Espace, Shrine Empire, and Vadehra Art Gallery.

Working across textile, printmaking, photography, and sculptural painting, Blueprint 12’s artists traverse personal and collective geographies to engage with memory, place, and the social and political structures.

The gallery has exhibited works by Aravni Art Project, Akshay Bhoan, Anilakumar Govindappa, JK, Tanvi Ranjan, Vasundhara Sellamuthu, and Zoya Chaudhary.

“With this presentation, we’re foregrounding artists who defy binaries—of visibility and erasure, intimacy and politics, tradition and innovation. ‘Mapping the Margin’ invites viewers to inhabit the in-between, where resistance is tender and radicality can live quietly, yet powerfully, in material,” Mandiraa Lambba, co-founder of Blueprint 12, said in a statement.

For Exhibit 320, Richa Arya creates a collage of forgotten days through stitched iron sheets with brass wire, as her memory resists deletion, and B Pradhan’s large-scale sculptures with themes of migration, labour, and lost home show a cartography of exile – tracing the submerged roots of forced displacement.

“Emerging voices demonstrate how recurring motifs and techniques transcend mere stylistic signatures to become the very framework of each artist’s visual language, asserting their unique perspectives within the broader conversation on visual literacy,” Rasika Kajaria, director Exhibit 320, said.

While Gallery Espace’s exhibition explores the expressive possibilities of recurring motifs, forms, and gestures, Latitude 28 brings together 17 artists from across South Asia for its exhibition “In-Between / Beyond” that is not a “thematic constraint but a state of engagement”.

“Featuring the likes of Gogi Saroj Pal, Sheetal Gattani, Manisha Gera Baswani, and Chintan Upadhyay, our presentation explores how recurring motifs and techniques are not merely stylistic choices but essential tools in shaping an artist’s visual language and articulating their unique vision within the broader discourse of visual literacy,” said Renu Modi of Gallery Espace.

For Latitude 28, Anupama Alias Anil and Jayati Bose trace the tender thresholds of womanhood and fragile anatomies, Farhat Ali recontextualises Disney characters in miniature-inspired paintings, and Khadim Ali plucks stories from the epics and folklore in his shimmering tapestries only to reset them in the uncertain light of today.

The other artists exhibited by the six galleries include Ketaki Sarpotdar, Gopa Trivedi, Haseena Suresh, Pratul Dash, Sudipta Das, Viraj Khanna, Awdesh Tamrakar, Sangiti Maity, Astha Butail, Gigi Scaria, Faiza Butt, Jagannath Panda, Sudhir Patwardhan, Sunil Gupta, and Zaam Arif.

The art week will come to an end on September 4. PTI MAH MAH BK BK