Mumbai based artist Sameer Kulavoor’s solo show ‘YOU ARE ALL CAUGHT UP’  opened last week at Tarq. The series of paintings and drawings in the  show delve deeper and explore our use of social media in these  extraordinary times. Sameer has used the personal and the political to  express what he feels. In some of the other works in the exhibition, he  has continued his exploration of the urban landscape around him in the  changed scenario of the pandemic. We caught up with him to know more.

Cover: I LIKE IT, WHAT IS IT?, 2019. Courtesy: Sameer Kulavoor and TARQ

A panel discussion on Independent Cinema and the politics of  representation. Participants: directors Deepa Mehta, Faraz Arif Ansari  and Onir, actors Swara Bhaskar and Vivek Gomber and chaired by  Engendered director Myna Mukherjee and Vivek Vaswani.

Recording Courtesy: Engendered and IVIEW World Film Festival with support from Pearl Academy

Vidur Sethi in conversation with Shivangi Singh, Shefalee Jain and Lokesh Khodke of Blue Jackal.

Blue Jackal is a platform for engaging with and creating visual narratives, comics, picture books. It aims at initiating multiple dialogues by playing with this interesting medium of colliding written and visual languages through various interactive programs. In this conversation, Blue Jackal delves into an explanation of graphic narratives, how this style of storytelling contributes to a given context, which at this point is a pandemic, and explores its history and works in India and the world.

Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari, Kathmandu-based artists, cultural organisers, and co-founders of artist collective Artree Nepal, are also curators of Kathmandu Triennale 2020.

Hit Man Gurung’s projects focus socio-political issues of Nepal, including internal and international mass migration, Maoist insurgency in the country, and the ill effects of capitalism.

Sheelasha Rajbhandari is interested in exploring alternative and plural narratives by learning the value of folktales, folklore, oral histories, mythologies, material culture, performance, and rituals.

Both have collaborated on multiple projects, including “12 Bishakh – Camp.Hub” Post Earthquake Community Art Project, in which they were Co-Artistic Directors. They have also contributed to several books. Recently, Rajbhandari and Gurung  have been traveling to various places in Nepal and beyond for their long term research based collaborative projects.

Vidur Sethi spoke to them about curation, the Kathmandu Triennale, art in Nepal, including exploring local narratives and the need for more south asian collaboration in the arts among various other issues.

Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi is a writer and curator based in New Delhi and New York. In the past decade, he was involved in research and curatorial projects with Park Avenue Armory, Asia Society in New York, and held positions with Devi Art Foundation, Raqs Media Collective, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. His recent solo curated projects include Missing Hue of the Rainbow and Dissent Library(2019) at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College / Hessel Museum of Art, New York, In the Presence of Others (2016), Korean Cultural Centre, New Delhi. Mopidevi was also the Curatorial Advisor for When Artists Enter the Factories exhibition at Brooklyn Army Terminal, New York (2019).

Mopidevi’s single and collaborative writing has appeared in John Akomfrah: Signs of Empire, New Museum, New York (2018), Songs for Sabotage, New Museum + Phaidon (New York / London, 2018), Information: Documents of Contemporary Art, MIT Press + Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2016), Raqs Media Collective: Case Book (Toronto, 2014), INSERT2014 Publication (Delhi, 2014), An Autocorrected Journal (Manila, 2014), among others. He is also a regular writer for many journals and publications; including Hong Kong-based OCULA.

A graduate from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, Mopidevi is currently working towards finishing his doctoral dissertation at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (SAA, JNU), New Delhi. He also holds a Master of Philosophy in Visual Studies from SAA, JNU, and a Master of Visual Arts in Art History & Aesthetics from The M.S.University of Baroda, Gujarat, India.

Vidur Sethi had a conversation with him about curatorial practice and processes; his experience of curating various shows; and delving into questions around the role and figure of an artist-curator, the various points of entry and encounter in an exhibition and working with a space while curating a show.

Most of us are already aware of the impact to our mental and physical health, financial stability and other negative implications because of this pandemic. It is a drastic change to the way we live our lives. But we also need to focus on the positives. Living in the present and learning from each other's experience is imperative.

Carrying on from our previous episode, we asked people to express their thoughts on the evolving situation in their lives and how they were adapting to new realities.

A big thank you to the first responders, doctors, nurses, the police, volunteers and all who are serving everybody else selflessly and tirelessly.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost loved ones to the pandemic.

We thank everybody who contributed to this episode. We hope these shared experiences will help us all to figure out things better in our own lives. As people, we need to be sensitive and caring. Let us offer comfort, kindness and support to each other in these trying times. Once again, be safe, take care and God bless.

Contributors: Kimberly Goes, Ayushi Chaurasia, Jui Khopkar, Pooja Jain, Sitara Chowfla, Najrin Islam, Shalmali Shetty, Aditi Mehra and Hemant Kumar.

These are unprecedented days for all of humanity. As requested by the government, most of us are locked down and indoors. There are going to be health implications, financial and job losses, businesses shutting down, the economy collapsing. People are living with fear and anxiety. Families and loved ones are suffering. The negative impacts are going to affect everybody. We as humans will need to evolve fast, learn quickly and put into practice all that is needed to survive.  Learning from each other's experience is key. We asked people from different walks of life, living all over India to share their thoughts and experiences in these times of upheaval.

Contributors: Teju Jhaveri, Shaunak Mahbubani, Swati Daftuar, Inder Salim, Preeti Singh, Anish Cherian, Ornob Karmakar, Esthappen, Akash Joshi, Pratika Yashaswi.

Sanket Jadia, an Inlaks Fine Arts Awardee in 2017, recently featured in Forbes India 30 under 30. The 28-year-old artist has developed a practice that deals with history and historical images that chronicle events of conflict and violence. He is ‘interested in the narratives and counter-narratives that formulate the public discourse, or rather ‘popular’ discourse around these key moments—How do representations of critical junctions in history shape the way society looks back on them? Can the absence of imagery lead to the creation of a collective public memory?’ Working around these questions and ideas of architecture, Jadia works with images, terracotta and various other materials to build a conversation on art and violence. Vidur Sethi and Sanket Jadia have an exchange on this relationship between art and crisis.

Photo: Sanket Jadia

Virkein Dhar is the founder of Poppy Seed Lab, an inter disciplinary creative studio that experiments with space, art, performance and programme making across genres and mediums. An architect and dancer by training, she has worn multiple hats as a performer, designer, researcher, curator, strategist and manager, working across disciplines. Vidur Sethi spoke to her about her recent projects and her process of experimenting with different disciplines.

Photo: Roaming Goblin

We caught up with Gopika Chowfla, a designer and a visual artist and one of the organisers of the Goa Open Arts Festival. She spoke about the importance and the need for the festival.