Surendran Nair, Mephistopheles....Otherwise, the Quaquaversal Prolix (Cuckoonebulopolis), 2003
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Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India
This exhibition presents the work of thirty-six artists and three collectives from both urban and rural India produced from 1990 to the present. The selection explores the role of place and desire in the creation of visual art in contemporary India, at a time defined by economic globalization and political fundamentalism. The exhibition investigates the impact of these germinal forces on the work of a diverse group of artists who represent different generations, regions, and social contexts. Their work spans several professional, material, and disciplinary boundaries, extending across urban, gallery-based practice and Adivasi (the tribal peoples of India), folk, and popular visual cultures. There are clearly discernible links, dialogues, and arguments across this spectrum. The exhibition contributes to a contemporary understanding of the diversity of visual culture in contemporary India.
The works are arranged in five interlocking thematic categories. These thematic divisions suggest flows across porous boundaries rather than watertight compartments. In New York, Edge of Desire is presented at two locations, the Asia Society Museum and the Queens Museum of Art. The Asia Society Museum features the categories “Unruly Visions” and “Location/Longing,” and the Queens Museum of Art features “Transient Self,” “Contested Terrain,” and “Recycled Futures.” Though there is a sequence in the way the exhibition was conceived, the viewer is invited to see it as groupings by thematic structure, offered as a way of entry into this rich, complex, and varied body of work that is unflinching in its encounter with the contemporary world.
Chaitanya Sambrani
Australian National University
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