calendario eventi  :: 

X

4/2/2009

Indian Popular Culture and beyond

Alcala' 31, Madrid

Curated by Shaheen Merali with Jyotindra Jain

On February 5th, 2009, the exhibition “Indian Popular Culture..... and beyond: The Untold (the rise of) Schisms” will open at the historical building of Sala Alcalá 31 in Madrid. The exhibition will coincide with the focus on India by ARCO 2009.
This will be the first time such a critical appraisal and reading of Asian popular culture for a Spanish audience has been presented. This exhibition provides an interrogatory and critical glimpse of the explosion of popular visual culture in India and beyond. The further assessment of ‘Orientalism’, as a framing trope of the non-European other, also allows a reframing and understanding of the role of ‘exoticism’ in relationship to held notions of ‘truth’.
The Untold provides an important platform upon which to base an understanding of how the popular can be used in the construction of both nationalism and religion-based ideologies by exploring the use and history of image manipulation; significant factors when considering the intrinsic instrumentalisation that has been used to transform democratic and secular societies.

The exhibition, The Untold, is divided into three sections.
Part I: Indian Popular Culture: ‘The Conquest of the world as Picture’
The first, and most opaque, segment is a collection of popular visual material, often compiled from ephemeral paper and pedestrian objects. ‘The Conquest of the world as Picture’ has been collected and organized into eight sections by Professor Jyotindra Jain in Delhi and offers an analytical view of the role played by Popular Indian Imagery of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the construction of Cultural, Social and National identities.
This collection of 300 eclectic materials, including calendars, collage and studio photography, allows the viewer to recognize the strategic compilation of images from diverse visual sources, including German Romanticism and Indian mythology, on one picture plane which facilitates the seizure of aesthetic and cultural meaning.

Part II: Role of moving images in a removed culture:
The inclusion of two key documentaries by Rakesh Sharma (2003) and Forugh Farrokhzad (1963), provides an invaluable commentary to the construction of a visual narrative of these artists’ interest in negotiating difference and the management of conflict. Their insight and portraiture of India and Iran, allow us to examine the tangents which are often lost in inadequate representation and journalistic ventures. Their insightful work manages to trigger and raise key features of and within contemporary Asia, from regional government’s role in human contravention to the collective oblivion.

Part III: Ring of Fire - Iran, Iraq and beyond:
The final part is a visual discourse by four artists, Riyas Komu (Mumbai), Sara Rahbar (New York and Tehran), G.R. Iranna (Delhi) and Prasad Raghavan (Delhi). Komu’s digitised images portray an attempt to map Iraqi youth’s rejuvenated pride in its emerging football arenas, whilst Rahbar uses the national flags of America and Iran as embroidered sites of both unilateral intent and Islamic consumption. The re-working of film posters by Raghavan provides an acute assessment of their place as narratives of the twentieth century, whilst Iranna’s monumental sculpture configures torture as a popular motif of the new world order.

The exhibition has been organised by la Dirección General de Archivos, Museos y Bibliotecas de la Consejería de Cultura y Turismo de la Comunidad de Madrid.
An approx. 180-page soft-cover publication (Spanish-English) will accompany the show, featuring essays by Shaheen Merali and Jyotindra Jain as well as a photo essay by CK Rajan. The catalogue will be available at Sala Alcalá 31.

For more press information and images
please contact Press Department, at Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, tel: +00 34 91 720 81 12/13/14 /
E-mail: prensa.cultura@madrid.org
and/or Nadine Dinter, project coordinator at presse@nadine-dinter.de

Opening February 5th, 2009, at 7 pm

Sala Alcalá 31
C/. Alcalá 31, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Opening times: Tuesday to Saturday: 11am to 8.30 pm, Sundays and holidays: 11am to 2 pm
Closed on Mondays and on May 1st, 2009
Guided tours: every Saturday from 12 am to 2 pm and from 6 pm to 8 pm; every Sunday between 12 am to 2 pm.
Free entry

stampa

permanent link