Journey with the canvas

Starting tomorrow The Journey is the Destination at the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya will trace the journey of eight artists juxtaposing their recent and earlier works The idea behind the show is that in each case the difference or distance between the work in the collection and the recent work would offer insight into the transformation of the artist The show displays works by Anju and Atul Dodiya Baiju Parthan Nalini Malani Sudhir Patwardhan Sunil Gawde Vivan Sundaram and Zarina Hashmi Artist and curator Vivan Sundaram tells Kamini Sawhney curator Jehangir Nicholson Gallery CSMVS about his work over the yearsVivan Sundaramrsquos work from 1991 titled EclipseVivan Sundaram From Eclipse 1991 until To Draw a Line 2007 Eclipse 1991 was the beginning of a change taking place in my practice and is a combination of drawing and reverse painting This followed with the exhibition Engine Oil and Charcoal Works on Paper 1991 In this series I sought to establish a more active relationship between used engine oil and drawingThis possibly marked my earliest attempts to move into threedimensional works The use of oil and charcoal triggers multiple associations mdash an indispensable resource a global commodity and an artistic medium as well This series was a response to the first Gulf War and the global turmoil that it sparkedEarth Atul Dodiyarsquos work from 1992There were many reasons for the change This was a period when Soviet communism opened itself to a market economy and neoliberal capitalism made its entry television was the new presence in peoplersquos homes the BJP was on the rise and we witnessed the demolition of the Babri Masjid These were dramatic developments and many artists responded with total shifts in their practiceMigrant a work of Sudhir Patwardhan from 2009 Pics courtesyJehangir Nicholson Gallery The Journey is the DestinationRumanna Hussainrsquos Question Is it What You Think was the title of the exhibition at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art which foregrounded the radical change to installation art My Memorial 19932013 was included in this show Till then there was a resistance a sort of selfimposed restriction to work in nonconventional mediums Avantgarde was seen as western but this kind of work was being done globally in countries of Latin America Africa and Asia as wellVivan SundaramTo Draw a Line is a video work that can be connected to my drawings It was shot during a politically charged moment at the Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda in 2007 where the BJP had barged in and removed a studentrsquos work The head of the Art History Department Shivaji Panikker was attacked I proposed a fortyhour nonstop drawing workshop in the painting studio on the eve of the 60th anniversary of independence Sixtyfoot long sheets of Italian drawing paper lined the walls and floor Artists and students were asked to draw all over and it became a multi dimensional thing mdash an expanded sort of mural where artists crossed over into each otherrsquos workBB Suresh wandered over into KG Subramanyanrsquos drawing and it was a harmonious movement from one into another an erasure of boundaries where it was difficult to tell where one began and another ended I used drawing as it allows the possibility of free spontaneous relation to what is on the surface and the range of materials usedThe workshop was called To Draw a Line In Memory of Bhupen Khakhar and Nasreen Mohamedi It started on August 13 and ended on the evening of the following day Anybody could come and be a part of it As the day progressed the momentum began to build At the opening everyone was asked to tear the drawings People were given two options mdash to bury or burn the ripped sheets At midnight Nehrursquos independence speech was read Through the workshop drawing functioned as statement activity as performance There were several elements that were significant here mdash notions of erasure of trace of collaboration of performance There was no singular author to this project work Many hands had come together to create it A performance event comes to an end It has served its purpose A sitespecific installation is usually destroyed Its afterlife survives as the creative video documentFrom March 15 opens 530 pm to June 30 daily 1015 am 6 pmAt CSMVS Fort Call 22029613