India's largest exhibition of contemporary art is at a museum show in Shanghai.
On July 14, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai will host an extraordinary show — for the first time in China, a major exhibition of Indian contemporary art. “I’m excited,” says Aparajita Jain of Sevenart, who was instrumental in organising — but not curating — the show, “because it is not just any exhibition but a museum show.” The museum, located in Shanghai’s People’s Park, is privately owned by Samuel King, possibly the reason why the process took only eight months, following Jain’s visit there, and a flurry of emails.
“I sent them comprehensive data on contemporary art in India, about Indian artists and images of their works, says Jain. This resulted in a visit to India by curator Diana Freundi. Alexander Keith and Jitish Kallat assisted in the viewing and selecting of the works, many of which are from private collections and have been loaned specially for the show. In all, 65 works by 21 artists, covering the gamut of contemporary art, are being shipped in two containers.
The show comes at a time when, says Jain, “Chinese art has exploded beyond belief”, especially in terms of price points. “They want to see where we are vis-a-vis where they are. The interest in Indian art is huge, and so they were happy to support us.” That support, however, comes with limitations. While there is no financial outlay from the museum, it has had the catalogue sponsored, and is taking care of the panel discussion at which Indian and Chinese artists will be present. The Indian consul general in Shanghai, too, has been supportive. And the ICCR has provided “partial support”, indicates Jain, who has shouldered the responsibility for all the logistics of shipping, insurance and coping with the bureaucracy.
Jain, who stumbled into the world almost by accident — her interest was in design, which she merged with art-led design in shows such as Vistaar and, more recently, with Gunjan Gupta’s works in which she participated at the Sotheby’s design show — says she started out, as many do, untrained and collecting objects for her home. “There was nothing that was fun, or unique, nobody commissioning artists to do anything that was affordable.” Today, she laughs at the oxymoron of affordable art, but says, “Prices of Chinese art have exploded beyond belief. In comparison, Indian art is still very affordable.”
Among the artists participating in the show are Jitish Kallat, his wife Reena Saini-Kallat, Subodh Gupta, T V Santhosh, Riyas Komu, Hema Upadhyay, Jagannath Panda, Vivek Vilasini, and courtesy of Nature Morte, Thukral & Tagra. While Kallat’s Universal Recipient will be exhibited too, the star attraction at the show is clearly his Aquasaurus, part of his series of vehicles assembled with fibreglass bones, only this one is a mega-sized oil tanker, and has required an entire container to crate and ship. “It’s an extraordinary work, and assembling it there will be a huge job,” she laughs — clearly, language isn’t the only issue when it comes to executing a mammoth exhibition in China.
Jain says she proved useful since “the foreign curators knew nothing about our galleries, or artists, it was useful for them to work with someone like me who could take them to the artists’ studios, put it all together…”. It could also prove a worthwhile investment when, their curiosity whetted, the Chinese demand gallery exhibitions. At that point, Jain will be ideally suited to rise to the occasion. Now, to wait and see if the Chinese rise to the bait.
