India Art Fair is back with a more vibrant canvas
The human movement — complex, fluid and functional — was a passion and the subject of exploration for Israeli dancer-choreographer Noa Eshkol. The Chamber Dance Group, which she founded in 1954 in Tel Aviv, would perform not to music but only to the steady pulse of the metronome, celebrating the pure movement of the human body. But when the 1973 Arab–israeli War disrupted those performances, the artist headed out on another journey of creativity and expression — piecing together discarded fabrics as though they were paint to create vibrant, emotive “wall carpets”.
Noa Eshkol created some 750 wall carpets until her death in 2007. A selection of these artworks will now be shown by Berlin-based gallery, neugerriemschneider, in India for the first time at the four-day India Art Fair that begins on April 28.
The fair, the country’s biggest exhibition of contemporary and modern art from South Asia, was meant to return after a year’s gap in February this year but was put off because of the Omicron wave. It is back now, showcasing 77 exhibitors across 16 cities, including 63 galleries and 14 institutional participants, among them the Kochi Biennale Foundation, Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation, Alkazi Theatre Archives, Liszt Institute Hungarian Cultural Centre, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and Serendipity Arts. Of the participating galleries, four are international (from the US, UK and Brazil).
The past and its impact on the present, the here and now, and the future will find expression in different forms and formats at the fair, which is in its 13 edition. For instance, as part of performing arts, Arpita Akhanda, a contemporary artist from Odisha, will explore the effects of Partition and displacement on the body. And the workshop, “Dots, Lines and Shapes”, will demonstrate the different ways in which we interpret and perceive information. Also planned are 30- to 40-minute public art walks at the art fair grounds, one of which will delve into the impact of the pandemic through art and introspection. Another will take a journey into the history and future of cameras, and attempt to look at the world through the lens of a photographer.
The Studio, a new space at the fair, will traverse across creative fields, going beyond visual art, design and fashion to include technology and the digital world — for example, interactive bots.
Among the things that appear to have made a decisive entry into the world of art are non-fungible tokens, or NFTS. India Art Fair couldn’t have ignored those. “We will not only have NFT works by Indian artists presented by digital art platform Terrain.art, we will also have a dedicated auditorium talk (titled “Nftease”) to demystify NFTS,” says Jaya Asokan, the fair director.
India Art Fair is on from April 28 to May 1 at NSIC Grounds, Delhi. Details on indiaartfair.in
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