Fragility marks a new moment in contemporary art that locates ruptures through artistic materials. Leading artists in India and the diaspora come together for the first time to create an experience that counters the effects of globalization through a series of works that consider not the power of economic growth and strength and rise of consumerism, but their fragile counterparts-the breakable, psychical, contingent, and physical and material points of pressure. The exhibition captures the spirit of location using building materials from rapidly expanding Gurgaon, while also using the site of a commercial gallery situated in the area, to highlight the transitions and fluctuations of an art world in which such experimental shows are now being held.
The focus on fragile materials reflects the political concerns of India as a nation-state in an increasingly interdependent world. As such the exhibition considers the physical and psychological realities of economic expansion through works that contemplate rupture at their core. On one level, fragility is about the material in which an object is made: paper, feathers, organic matter or fibres, whose vulnerable nature characterizes fluctuations of time and space and stresses how much attention and awareness is needed to preserve them. On another level, such objects presented together become signs and symbols of the fragility of political contexts, of instabilities within society and of the dissolving of boundaries between states and subjects at a time when the aspirations of India as superpower have long been internally questioned. This is at the same moment when external world crises reflect the fallout of interlinked economies and reveal their attendant fragility.
Fragility is an experience for the viewer. The spectator is led through three chambers, or states of fragility: through air followed by descent into earth and body. This organization reflects three planes of fragility in conceptual, civilizational and corporeal spaces. The artists featured in the exhibition interpret 'fragility' differently in terms of media and experience, using installations, drawing, objects, photography and video to express these concerns. The exhibition moves beyond the binary of East and West to consider art from plural and shared locations, in terms of space and movement, and earth and body, to heighten the exquisite tension between aesthetic beauty and its possible shattering.
Participating artists include Jaishri Abichandani, Rina Banerjee, Anita Dube, Pooja Iranna, Susanta Mandal, Yamini Nayar, Manisha Parekh, Srinivasa Prasad, Ashim Purkayastha, Mithu Sen, Om Soorya, Masooma Syed, L.N. Tallur, Sisir Thapa
About curator Rakhee Balaram
Rakhee Balaram holds two doctorates, in French Literature and Art History, from Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, she has worked extensively on the European avant-garde and on cross-cultural artistic relations. She has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick and is currently Visiting Faculty at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
