Making South Asian artists equal players on a global stage
KALA--South Asia’s newest educational and artistic platform, inspired by the diverse culture and modern art history of Sri Lanka gets off the ground on January 29. Here Sandhini Poddar, Curatorial Advisor to KALA’s inaugural exhibition - Pivot Glide Echo in Colombo, who is also Adjunct Curator at Large, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project talks about KALA’s mission and vision.
Extracts from her interview:
Can you share a bit of your background story with us? When did you decide to pursue art history and how did your studies lead you to become an international museum curator?
I remember going to my very first exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai at an age when I was shorter than the paintings and had to look up to view them! I never made a conscious decision to pursue art history; art has been part of my life since childhood. My mother, Dr. Rashmi Poddar, is an academic with a specialization in Indian philosophy and aesthetics and I was lucky to be able to travel with my family to far-flung places rich in history such as Egypt, Italy, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Uzbekistan as a teenager.
My formal studies in philosophy and art history began at university in Mumbai and continued for a decade until I started working in New York at a new not-for-profit art space in Chelsea in 2003. I joined the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation as one of their two curators of Asian art in 2007 and have had a wonderfully fruitful relationship with the foundation since then.
You are the Curatorial Advisor for KALA. Can you tell us more about the reason you decided to work with the platform?
I have quipped about this in the past, but it’s worth saying again: if you liken South Asia to a football field, we have the players but not the pitch! What do I mean by this? Our infrastructures for the study and appreciation of our artists and art histories is still woefully lacking. Infrastructure here of course doesn’t only apply to the hardware: museums, universities, not-forprofits, biennales and art festivals, artist residencies, grant-making bodies, governmental support and investment, commercial galleries and auction houses, but as importantly, to the software: highly trained and motivated curators, critics, and writers who help establish new canons of world art history and register us as equal players on a global stage.
I was taught from an early age to care about the field—the field at large, and by this I mean the intellectual and aesthetic terrain of South Asian art—rather than pay heed to my individual aggrandisement. Too often we find ourselves in positions of isolation rather than active collaboration and solidarity.
When I was invited to serve as the Curatorial Advisor for KALA for the first three iterations, I was very happy to commit straightaway. What better way is there for me to give back to my region than with my time, care, and sheer passion? We all need mentors, we all need comrades in arms, we all need supporters and guardians, and we certainly all need each other. I am very excited about spending more time in Sri Lanka for KALA, which will enable me to sit down and learn from artists.
KALA is an ambitious platform, created for multiple generations of artists and art lovers in Sri Lanka and in South Asia. What do you hope KALA can achieve through its programming?
In the short term I would hope that it would add positively to the critical initiatives that already exist in Sri Lanka—since we are not starting at tabula rasa—and that it would serve as a safe and productive space for artists, thinkers, curators, students, and lay audience members to come together to celebrate Sri Lanka’s wonderful artist citizenry, both at home and in the diaspora.
Over time I hope that KALA will serve as another nodal point within South Asia, alongside other vital projects in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, so that more regional collaboration can occur.