desicontemporaryart-blog

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NASREEN MOHAMEDI, UNTITLED. INK AND GRAPHITE ON PAPER. CA. 1975. (SIKANDER AND HYDARI COLLECTION)

Nasreen Mohamedi (1937—1990) was an Indian artist best known for her radical line-based drawings. She was a pioneering artist that quietly redefined South Asian Modernism and despite being relatively unknown outside of her native India during her lifetime, Mohamedi's work has received popular acclaim internationally over the last decade.

Mohamedi was born in Karachi, which then belonged to British India, in 1937. Her family moved to Bombay in 1944, and Mohamedi spent the bulk of her childhood there. She led a cosmopolitan life, studying Western philosophy and art, travelling often. In 1954, Mohamedi was accepted to St. Martin’s School of Art in London, where she lived for nearly a decade, until relocating to Paris to study print-making. She later moved back to India and taught at the prestigious M.S. University in Baroda (now Vadodara). Throughout, she painted and drew with persistent discipline, pursuing a lifelong fascination with light, space, and perspective. Her works are minimalist, but they are also revolutionary. While most of her South Asian contemporaries were producing colourful, representational works, Mohamedi dealt in the muted and abstract. (Source: The New York Times)

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Aisha Khalid, Divided, 2017, Triptych, gouache on wasli paper, 71 x 154 cm

Aisha Khalid was born in Lahore in 1972, earned a BFA from the National College of Arts there and went on to study at the Rijksakademiein Amsterdam. Her works fuse the disciplines of geometric patterning and botanical studies into ambiguous correlations, subjects defined by their ghosts. The subject matter and political nature of her work is influenced by her own personal experiences around gender, aesthetics, the role of women, and power relationships between the East and West. As a Pakistani woman who grew up in a modest household, domesticity is treated with both critique and fondness. Khalid is part of a movement of artists in Pakistan that works in the traditional medium of miniature painting. However, she juxtaposes these decorative surfaces with deeply controversial social and political messages. Her work explores issues around cultural expectations, stereotyping, multiple oppressions of women, and the global aftermath of 9/11 (Source: Nature Morte).

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Transgressions II, 2009, a video/shadow play from the Asia Society Museum Collection

An internationally recognized Indian contemporary artist, Nalini Malani is known for her politically charged mixed-media paintings and drawings, videos, installations, and theater projects. Malani was one of the first artists to introduce overtly feminist themes in the 1980s. She notes her work is most influenced by her experience of the partition. Malani critically examines gender roles, race, transnational politics, and the impact of globalization and consumerism.

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Pranati Panda - Weaving Land Mixed Media on paper 2017

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Untitled - Aditi Singh

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Bhupen Khakhar in Sayaji Baug gardens, Vadodara, 1983, photo by Jyoti Bhatt

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Khushboo Gulati, 2012 

Find her @dotheaddivinity on Instagram

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Pleasure Pillars - Shahzia Sikander, 2001

Shahzia Sikander received her BFA in 1991 from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. Pakistani-born and internationally recognized, Sikander's pioneering practice takes Indo-Persian miniature painting as a point of departure. She challenges the strict formal tropes of miniature painting as well as its medium-based restrictions by experimenting with scale and media. Such media include animation, video, mural, and collaboration with other artists. Her process-based work is concerned with examining the forces at stake in contested cultural and political histories. 

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EnTWINed - Singh Twins MBE

2010

Collection Museum of London

Amrit and Rabindra Singh, otherwise known as the Singh Twins, are a rebellious pair of contemporary British Sikh artists of international acclaim. Their art ranges from the intensely personal to the deeply political and they draw on the tradition of Indian miniature art, with their work crammed with patterns, vibrant colours and political, social and cultural references. They address themes including identity, colonialism, migration and celebrity culture. The Twins have exhibited everywhere from the Tate Britain to the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, and held solo shows in prestigious arts institutions like London’s National Portrait Gallery.

With EnTWINed, the Singh Twins seek to redress the balance of colonial history. They wish to show that the reality of colonialism and its legacy is not simply black and white and nor does it exist as one undisputed narrative. Their art reminds us that while the West claims an awareness of the oppressions and horrors of colonialism, they continue to dominate all discourse surrounding it.

EnTWINed looks at O’Neill’s paintings of the Indian mutiny in 1850s and reimagines them from the Indian perspective, celebrating the Indian heroes and freedom fighters of that time. The piece incorporates the Singh Twins’ own family, who came to England after the partition, and disembarked on the same dock as the ships featured in O’Neill’s paintings. It also explores the impact of empire on modern day culture and the connection between Britain and India - our shared heritage. 

Images copyright The Singh Twins: www.singhtwins.co.uk