N° 6 2007 December/January
Indian Stories
Is India the new China? Slowly but surely the West is beginning to realize that in addition to the communist superpower another global power is on the rise. India is less exotic than China. The West has ties with it for centuries, including in the arts.
Yet this relative familiarity is precisely what seems to have long checked the breakthrough of Indian culture on the world stage. Now, however, interest is truly growing. Witness, for example, the large exhibitions of Indian art suddenly popping up everywhere – this autumn in Bern and New York, and, starting in February, in the MuHKA in Antwerp.
There are good reasons for this increased interest in the subcontinent. India is at the forefront when it comes to reflection upon cultural exchange at the global level. More than China, this country has built up an impressive intellectual expertise on the effects of globalism on culture.
Now that the West definitely must admit that other regions are beginning to set the tone and that it had better open the gates of its ‘own province’ in order to survive, India is showing the world how to modernize while maintaining one’s own tradition.
01/12/07 Grant Watson
India is modernizing at varying speeds. The seeds of this development lie far in the past, more than seventy years ago. Grant Watson describes the history of a special region in India, Bangalore, in the South of India.
01/12/07 Trevor Smith
She is one of the most well-known Indian artists at the moment, having shown her work in all the major cities – most recently in Horn Please in Bern and at the Lyon Biennial. Sheela Gowda (1957), who lives in Bangalore, makes drawings, sculptures and installations which despite their unmistakable tenor of social criticism are executed with great care and formal subtlety.
01/12/07 Nancy Adajania
Unlike the unassuming elder generations, many young Indian artists simply claim their place on the international art front, whether the West is ready for them or not. Their art is ‘transnational’ and ‘multimedial’ and is a welcome contribution to the many new practices being developed between established cultures and disciplines throughout the world.
01/12/07 Ingrid Commandeur
Since being accepted at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, the Armenian-born artist, Karen Sargsyan, has had a whirlwind career. His baroque, fragile, yet technically highly refined paper sculpture groups appeal to the imagination. They are tableaux vivants in which viewers discover the theatres of comedy and tragedy, as well as countless hidden histories.
The Power of Postcolonial Thinking
01/12/07 Saloni Mathur
South-Asian cultural philosophers are authoritative in present-day thinking on the consequences of today’s globalism. Trained in both India and the West, they know better than anyone how to place the complexity of contemporary cultures in a critical light. What makes their approach so special?
