Pascale Marthine Tayou
Ayisha Abraham
Ravi Agarwal
Sarnath Banerjee
Hemali Bhuta
Nikhil Chopra
Desire Machine Collective
Sheela Gowda
Sakshi Gupta
Shilpa Gupta
Subodh Gupta
N S Harsha
Abhishek Hazra
Shanay Jhaveri
Jitish Kallat
Amar Kanwar
Bharti Kher
Bose Krishnamachari
Nalini Malani
Jagannath Panda
Prajakta Potnis
Raqs Media Collective
Tejal Shah
Valay Shende
Sudarshan Shetty
Dayanita Singh
Sumakshi Singh
Studio Mumbai Architects
Michael Anastassiades
Kiran Subbaiah
Ashok Sukumaran
Shaina Anand
Thukral & Tagra
Hema Upadhyay
Julia Peyton-Jones
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Gunnar B. Kvaran
Thierry Prat
Thierry Raspail
Bose Krishnamachari
Indian Highway, 2nd season, episode IV: an exhibition in the form of a road movie presenting a panorama of Indian contemporary art in the work of 31 artists. Monumental works, site-specific installations, a focus on the Studio Mumbai, plus the reconfiguration of the curatorial project by Bose Krishnamachari. The title reflects the importance of migratory fluxes in the modern world. Pascale Marthine Tayou: known for his assemblages, paintings and installations, the materials for which are provided by objects discarded by society, he deals with worrying, contemporary issues with a strong socio-political resonance.
Indian Highway IV
In February 2011, macLYON is putting on Indian
Highway IV, an exhibition in the form of a road movie
presenting a panorama of Indian contemporary
art in the work of 31 artists. It will occupy a space
of 2,000 square metres over two floors, which are
being specially reconfigured for the occasion.
General Curatorship:
The artistic direction is placed under the supervision of Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gunnar B. Kvaran.
Lyon Curatorship:
Thierry Raspail, Director of the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, is the curator of this exhibition. Thierry Prat, Production Manager is responsible for the exhibition design.
Their visits to art studios in Mumbai and New Delhi in June
2010 were organized and guided by Vidya Shivadas and Deepti
Mulgund, with the collaboration of Bose Krishnamachari.
Curatorial concept
Indian Highway IV: 2nd season, episode IV: the highway goes
into overdrive...
Indian Highway continues its journey across 3 continents:
Europe, South America and Asia. Eeach stage along
the Indian Highway is the occasion for a totally new
episode with new curators, new artists, new spatial
configurations, and a special focus on a guest artist.
After London (Serpentine Gallery, 10.12.08 > 22.02.09), Oslo
(Astrup Fearnley Museet, 02.04.09 > 06.09.09), Herning (Museum of Contemporary Art, 13.03.10 > 12.09.10),
Indian Highway is stopping in Lyon for 5 months and taking on a new dimension: 2000 square metres, 31 artists (some
already prominent on the international circuit, others
youngsters or less well-known), monumental works never
seen before, site-specific installations, a focus on the Studio
Mumbai (winner of a special jury award at the 2010 Venice
architecture biennial), plus the reconfiguration of the
curatorial project by Bose Krishnamachari (general curator
of the upcoming Kochi Biennial in Kerala, India, in January
2011).
After Lyon, Indian Highway is heading on to the
MAXXI in Rome, then to Moscow, Singapore,
Hong Kong, São Paulo and Delhi.
Originally conceived by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans
Ulrich Obrist and Gunnar B. Kvaran for the Serpentine
Gallery (London) and Astrup (Oslo), this exhibition,
which reflects the new global artistic economy, will go
through ten successive permutations, defined by 10 new
curators. Thus each local incarnation of this permanent
work in progress will be different, and Indian Highway
will offer a complete image of itself only at the end of
its tour – at the end of its multiple interpretations.
This new curatorial principle is a response to today’s
flux, to its controversies, contrasting critical voices,
varied forms of knowledge and ignorance, different
perspectives and traditions, postcolonial attitudes and
subaltern studies. It offers the only viable approach
in this late modern period if we are to grasp the
complexity of culture and the plasticity of art.
The conventional, generic, thematic and closed exhibition
(irrespective of theme) is now obsolete – that is, if it is
produced in the traditional, unilateral manner, from the
authority of a single centre or institution, and sent out
prefabricated, ready to circulate and be consumed.
In contrast, Indian Highway adopts a method that
does its utmost to get away from the old-fashioned
thinking that always assumed an "over there"; it seeks
to avoid notions of "exoticism" and to mix and layer
differing histories and movements of interpretation.
THE EXHIBITION
The title, Indian Highway, reflects the importance of
migratory fluxes in the modern world, the impact of
movements of thought and the importance of links
between rural and urban communities. Some works refer
to "information superhighways," others express current
forms of engagement, often of a political nature, with
regard to today’s fast-changing Indian society, with its
issues of gender, subordination, religious sectarianism,
clan mentalities and, of course, globalisation.
For the Lyon stage of Indian Highway IV, Thierry Raspail has decided to focus on Studio Mumbai Architects, working in association with the artist Michael Anastassiades, in order to create a big installation at the centre of the 2nd floor space of the macLYON.
An important place is also given to Subodh Gupta. In this
exhibition, he presents Take Off Your Shoes and Wash
Your Hands, an exceptional work in terms of its size (over
25 metres long), an installation and a video piece.
Nine artists have been specially selected for Lyon and added
to the unchanging core of the exhibition throughout its
various stages in order to allow an insight into emerging
Indian artistic creation. These artists are: Sarnath Banerjee,
Hemali Bhuta, Desire Machine Collective, Shanay Jhaveri,
Jagannath Panda, Valay hende, Sumakshi Singh, Studio Mumbai Architects & Michael Anastassiades, Thukral & Tagra.
At the MAC Lyon, the Indian Highway IV exhibition begins in the
museum entrance area and is spread out over the two floors, each measuring 1000m2.
In Lyon, Indian Highway IV presents the works of 31 artists, including 9 new artists listed in blue:
Ayisha Abraham, Ravi Agarwal, Sarnath
Banerjee, Hemali Bhuta, Nikhil Chopra,
Desire Machine Collective, Sheela Gowda,
Sakshi Gupta, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta,
N S Harsha, Abhishek Hazra, Shanay Jhaveri,
Jitish Kallat, Amar Kanwar, Bharti Kher, Bose
Krishnamachari, Nalini Malani, Jagannath
Panda, Prajakta Potnis, Raqs Media Collective,
Tejal Shah, Valay Shende, Sudarshan Shetty,
Dayanita Singh, Sumakshi Singh, Studio
Mumbai Architects & Michael Anastassiades,
Kiran Subbaiah, Ashok Sukumaran & Shaina
Anand, Thukral & Tagra, Hema Upadhyay.
Catalogue
A new version of the Indian Highway IV catalogue (Koenig Books) will be edited for this occasion, incorporating the artists exhibited in Lyon in 104 additional pages, over 300 pages in total.
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Pascale Marthine Tayou
24.02 > 15.05.20
In the MacLyon, the exhibition begins in the museum
entrance hall and carries on to the last floor
of the museum, which is one of the places of
the art trail through the city of Lyon.
Sculptures, paintings, drawings, photography,
installations – an exhibition with a powerful
visual impact where the senses and the
imagination compete fiercely with each other.
“For me, making an exhibition is celebrating
life. i try to find out where i’m at in my head.
I always see my exhibitions as a mixture
of salt and sugar. it’s life. You’re always
happy and then sad just afterwards, and
it starts again and there’s harmony – a
bit of light and a bit of darkness.
When i make an exhibition, i try to play with
the question of the human condition.”
Pascale Marthine Tayou
Always All Ways is the result of close collaboration
between the artist, the Malmö Konsthall (Sweden),
the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon and Veduta -
Biennale de Lyon. These words by Pascale Marthine Tayou could be taken to sum up what he is about:
“Like everyone else, I am three thousand years old”.
The artist takes on the history of the world and, wherever he
stops, gets everyone there involved.
Self-taught, his work is best experienced rather than
explained. Known for his assemblages, paintings and
installations, the materials for which are provided by
objects discarded by society (recycled materials gleaned
in Africa or from the nearby supermarket, piles of paper
torn into strips, gutted fridges, rags, used clothes...),
Pascale Marthine Tayou deals with worrying, contemporary
issues with a strong socio-political resonance.
Installations, collages, photos, sculptures, “dolls”, re-used
appropriated objects, videos, new creations – through forty
or so of his works, Pascale Marthine Tayou invites the viewer
into his joyous, mysterious and bewitching universe, one
that is marked by humour and which encourages the viewer
to question his / her vision of the world, of the Other and of
him / herself. Pascale Marthine Tayou’s work is an experience
to be lived according to one’s own rhythm or feelings.
The art trail through Lyon Tayou
“Whenever I organise an exhibition, it’s
the start of something new that has to do
with the place I’m in and what comes to my
mind. [...] Site-specific is the domain of true
freedom, it is taking power over risk. It is
what gives art such intense joie de vivre.”
Pascale Marthine Tayou
Every interlocutor is, in principle, a good interlocutor whether
he or she is a specialist, distracted or a tourist. What matters
is the creativity and the dialogue, the appropriation and
dealing with difference, not in order to reduce it, but to polish
its shine and bring out its density.
The first interlocutor is space. Pascale Marthine Tayou speaks
with the location. The work takes physical form only in the
place where it manifests itself. How could it be otherwise?
That is why this same project takes totally different, or even
incomparable forms in Lyon and Malmö: by the wonder of
contexts and poetic phrases.
In Lyon, Pascale Marthine Tayou wants to exhibit, he says,
“at anyone’s place”. That is one of the challenges: to exhibit
Tayou’s work in an office, at school, in public space, or even in the museum...
“I am not an artist. I reveal myself
to you as I am, and that’s all.”
Pascale Marthine Tayou
Pascale Marthine Tayou’s work is exhibited in an
art trail accross several areas of Lyon: a square, a
profundity of church, a police station, a restaurant, shops...
“This is an exhibition wherein everyone
had the possibility to become his / her own
test tube. What I say and what i think is not
different from you. I am like you; I am a part
of you. It is primarily a human adventure.”
Pascale Marthine Tayou
Pascale Marthine Tayou was born in 1967 in Yaounde
(Cameroon). He lives in Ghent (Belgium).
A catalogue entitled Always All Ways is conceived and co-edited by the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art and the Malmö Konsthall. The catalogue offers photographs of the exhibition and also includes essays by Jacob Fabricius, Director of Malmö’s Konsthall, Thierry Raspail, Director of the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Bernard Blistène, Director of the Cultural Development Department of the Centre Pompidou, as well as an interview with the artist Pascale Marthine Tayou, conducted by art critic Pernille Albrethsen.
Image: Shilpa Gupta, I Keep Falling at You, 2010
1500 microphones with integrated speakers, audio editing setup 370 x 180 x 150cm. Courtesy of the artist, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin and Yvon Lambert, Paris © Didier Barroso
Press Contacts
Muriel Jaby / Élise Vion-Delphin T +33 (0)4 72691705 / 25 communication@mac-lyon.com
Opening Wednesday, February 23, 2011 h 6.30 pm
Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art - MAC
Cité internationale 81 quai Charles de Gaulle 69006 Lyon
Opening Hours
Wednesday - Sunday, from 12 am to 7 pm
Admission
Full rate : 6 euros*
Concessions : 4 euros*
Free for visitors under 18
* subject to modification