The exhibition My East is Your West, was a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale. It was commissioned by The Gujral Foundation. It united for the first time, at the Biennale, the historically conflicting nations of India and Pakistan in a space shared by artists from both countries. Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai) and Rashid Rana (Lahore) presented a new series of works at the Palazzo Benzon, situated in the centre of Venice on the Grand Canal. This presentation provided a unique platform for artists from South Asia to enter into a dialogue through the arts, representing the Indian subcontinent as one region.
This publication presents Indian artist Shilpa Gupta’s monumental inflatable sculpture, Untitled (2023). The sculpture depicts the dualities of our innermost struggles and the externalities around us. This book includes a curatorial essay that situates Gupta’s new work in relation to her art practice and other global sociopolitical forces as well as a full-colour photo documentation of the sculpture against the backdrop of Singapore’s skyline. It also features a guest essay written by a well-known mental health professional who engages with the artist’s take on the human condition.
'I took the test and prayed for the colour of the lines on the strip to stay as they were. But they did not. The test was positive. I felt my entire world come crashing down around me.' Meet Ananya Sharma, not your regular, teenage girl-next-door. Sure, she loves hanging out with her friends and engaging in whispered confidences at sleepovers, but when it comes to boys, she has competition on her mind rather than romance. At school, she is passionate about math and the sciences, and completely focussed on cracking the IIT entrance exams. But when distraction enters her life in the form of the handsome and charming Rohit, Ananya discovers love, longing and betrayal, all at once. Finding herself pregnant at the age of seventeen, she learns that the world is a very different place once you are on its wrong side. The discovery of the fault lines in her parents' relationship-which until then had seemed perfect to her-further breaks her. Will Ananya be able to reverse the downward spiral that her life has plunged into and find meaning once again? In this wonderfully stark and honest portrayal of a teenager's life, Ananya: A Bittersweet Journey has managed to encapsulate an entire generation's struggle of growing up in today's often troubled times.
The first university-level textbook on the power, condition, and expanse of contemporary fine art drawing A Companion to Contemporary Drawing explores how 20th and 21st century artists have used drawing to understand and comment on the world. Presenting contributions by both theorists and practitioners, this unique textbook considers the place, space, and history of drawing and explores shifts in attitudes towards its practice over the years. Twenty-seven essays discuss how drawing emerges from the mind of the artist to question and reflect upon what they see, feel, and experience. This book discusses key themes in contemporary drawing practice, addresses the working conditions and context of artists, and considers a wide range of personal, social, and political considerations that influence artistic choices. Topics include the politics of eroticism in South American drawing, anti-capitalist drawing from Eastern Europe, drawing and conceptual art, feminist drawing, and exhibitions that have put drawing practices at the centre of contemporary art. This textbook: Demonstrates ways contemporary issues and concerns are addressed through drawing Reveals how drawing is used to make powerful social and political statements Situates works by contemporary practitioners within the context of their historical moment Explores how contemporary art practices utilize drawing as both process and finished artifact Shows how concepts of observation, representation, and audience have changed dramatically in the digital era Establishes drawing as a mode of thought Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, A Companion to Contemporary Drawing is a valuable text for students of fine art, art history, and curating, and for practitioners working within contemporary fine art practice.
Testosterone makes us stronger, happier, and smarter. It also makes us meaner, more violent and more selfish. A scientific look into the vast and unexpected influence testosterone has on our behavior, our society, and our bodies. The brain of every man—and every woman—is shaped by this tiny molecule from before birth: it propels our drive for exploration and risk, for competition and creation, and even our survival. The effects of testosterone permeate the traditions, philosophy, and literature of every known culture—without it, the world would be a drastically different place. Testosterone also has a role in humanity's darker side, contributing to violence, hubris, poverty, crime, and selfishness. Recent revelations of the science of testosterone show that high levels will deplete compassion and generosity, and even reduce the affection we show our children. In The Virility Paradox, internationally renowned oncologist and prostate cancer researcher Charles Ryan explores this complex chemical system responsible for a diverse spectrum of human behaviors and health in both men and women. Ryan taps his vast experience treating prostate cancer with testosterone-lowering therapy, observing that this often leads to profound changes in the patients' perspectives on their lives and relationships. Often, for the better. Ryan uses the journeys of these patients and others to illustrate the vast and sometimes unexpected influence testosterone has on human lives. Through the stories of real men and women, he also explores the connections between testosterone and conditions like dementia, autism, and cancer, as well as the biological underpinnings of sexual assault and the effects it has on everything from crime to investing to everyday choices we make. Integrating the molecular and the medical, sociology and storytelling, The Virility Paradox;offers a fascinating look at how one hormone has shaped history, and the connections between our biology, our behavior, and our best selves.
Voice as Art considers how artists have used human voices since they became reproducible and entered art discourse in the twentieth century. The discussion embeds artworks using voices within historical and theoretical contexts in a comparative overview arguing that reproduction caused increased creativity moving from acting to creating phonic materials framed by phenomenological deep listening by early video and performance to the plurality and sampling of postmodernism and the multiple angles of contemporary forensic listening. This change is an example of how artistic practice reveals the ideologies of listening. Using a range of examples from Hugo Ball, Martha Rosler, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Janet Cardiff and Mike Kelley through to contemporary practice by Shilpa Gupta, The Otolith Group and Elizabeth Price, the voice is tracked through modernism and postmodernism to posthumanism in relation to speaking subjects, sculptural objects, documents, dramaturgical utterance, forensic evidence, verbatim techniques and embodied listening. This book gives artists, researchers and art audiences ways to understand how voices exist in between theoretical discourses, and how with their utterances, artists create new dispositions in space by reworking genres to critique cultural form and meaning. This book will be of great interest to students and practitioners of sound art, visual culture and theatre and performance.
This book will present a richly informative and analytical account of the work of the artist Shipla Gupta, her ideas and projects, and the global political contexts in which she situates them. The most significant feature of her new media works - which deal with themes such as body piracy, the politics of the sacred, securitization and surveillance - is that they are universally readable, which makes them accessible and relevant to both local and international audiences. And yet Gupta's works retain a reserve of ambivalence, secrecy and dynamic paradox. Edited by the Bombay-based cultural theorist, art critic and independent curator Nancy Adajania, this book will carry essays by contributors of international eminence such as Peter Weibel, the director of ZKM, Karlsruhe; Quddus Mirza, art critic, artist and curator from Pakistan. AUTHOR: Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist, art critic and independent curator. ILLUSTRATIONS 200 colour images *
Contemporary art in India has enjoyed a tremendous flourishing since the early 1990s, thanks in part to the country's economic growth and the increased availability of media technology. As Indian artists establish an ever-stronger presence on the global art scene, India: Art Now shows how their negotiations of the global and the local are yielding fascinating fruit. Included here are works by Rina Banerjee, Hemali Bhuta, Atul Dodiya, Sheela Gowda, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Reena Kallat, Rashmi Kaleka, Bharti Kher, Ravinder Reddy, Vivan Sundaram and Thukral and Tagra, among others--artists who have found ways to express the aspirations and conflicts of a new generation, through media varying from painting, sculpture and photography to installation and interactive art. Leading Indian critics, scholars, writers and artists discuss new developments and artistic positions in Indian contemporary art, and its role on the global art scene.
"The Indian Ocean has been the subject of extensive historical enquiry, but the current ramifications of this long history have received less scholarly attention. This catalog for an exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, curated by Prasannan Parthasarathi and Salim Currimjee, brings together essays that contextualize the work of six contemporary artists from the region. Through a variety of mediums and forms, from watercolors to videos, collages, sculptures, and photographs, Shiraz Bayjoo, Shilpa Gupta, Nicholas Hlobo, Wangechi Mutu, Penny Siopis, and Hajra Waheed grapple with the past, present, and future of the Indian Ocean in their artistic narratives. With an interdisciplinary team of authors, drawn from environmental studies, postcolonial studies, literature, and history, Indian Ocean Current brings multiple lenses to bear on the work of the six artists. Essayists trace the plural societies that were created in the Indian Ocean as a consequence of migration, both voluntary and involuntary, in the Age of Empire when European powers dominated the ocean. In the mid-twentieth century decolonization transformed these societies and created new nation-states that were divided by, at times, hastily erected borders. Finally, these borders are now losing their meanings, for the rising waters of the Indian Ocean due to global warming do not respect such human-made divisions, threatening life itself, both human and non-human"--
