Two exhibitions
dal 31/1/2013 al 27/2/2013
Segnalato da
31/1/2013
Two exhibitions
Clark House Initiative, Bombay
Proletariat Aesthetics by Mohandas NN is a project of curatorial research into the politicised aesthetics prevalent in much contemporary art today. Zied Ben Romdhane, often deals with the history of a left movement sabotaged and then ignored in Tunisia during the period of Ben Ali's dictatorship.
In the first of a series of inquiry into the emergence of a distinct aesthetic informed by a communist political history in Kerala, Clark House uncovers the practice of the Fort Cochin based painter Mohandas. The exhibition reveals the artist’s close study of New Left ideas that emerged in the 70s, his close relationship with his mentor the Marxist theoretician TK Ramachandran, and his involvement with the Nila Reading Group - a gathering of left-leaning writers and poets publishing association. Mohandas questions the popular motifs, pictograms, and illustrative practice associated with the left movement, and their possible misunderstanding of ideology, through his depictions of pigeon gatherings, women cleaning the Fort Kochi beach, meetings in gardens, and portraits of his wife, the artist Sosa Joseph.
Tunisian photographer Zied Ben Romdhane presents waiting zones - from the first 'Sit In' at the central kasbah in the capital Tunis, from a police station in Kef that has been burned in a protest, at an airport in Djerba where no aircrafts come, at checkpoints in Tobruk in Libya, from Shousha the camp for refugees on the Tunisian and Libyan border called Ras Jedir, where people wait in lines for food, wait for tents, wait for passports, immigrant workers wait for their governments, wait for the civil war to end.
Zied was born in Tunis to a Berber family from the island of Djerba. He began taking photographs in 2003 to understand, and to change, the nation of ten million into which he was born. He has since worked in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Yemen - documenting the island of Socotra. http://www.ziedbenromdhane.com
Proletariat Aesthetics is a project of curatorial research into the politicised aesthetics prevalent in much contemporary art today. Mohandas NN reflects on Kerala, Marxist theory and its social objectives, in critique of a party system that now depends on communist nostalgia as it courts big business, creating a dogma based on the colour red and portraits of Che Guevara. Zied Ben Romdhane, often deals with the history of a left movement sabotaged and then ignored in Tunisia during the period of Ben Ali's dictatorship only to resurface within student movements during the mass protests of the Arab Spring and its present legitimacy as an opposition to the newly elected right wing government in Tunis.
Zones D'Attentes is Clark House's second in a series of projects that stand in solidarity with the Maghreb aimed at a dialogue between the two distant regions of North Africa and South Asia that began as conversations between Omar Fassatoui, Skander Zitouna, Yves-Victor Makaya, Mokhtar Kallel, Cheick Diaby and Sumesh Sharma in 2006. Curated by Sumesh Sharma and Zasha Colah.
Installations by artists Prabhakar Pachpute and Yogesh Barve remain on view in Clark House. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shunya-Collective/529953157022599
Image: Zied Ben Romdhane: Waiting Zones/ Zones D'Attentes series
Exhibitions open Friday 1 February | 6pm-8pm
Clark House
8 Nathalal Parekh Marg (old Wodehouse Road), Colaba, Bombay 400039
Open daily 11am-7pm, including Sundays, till 28 February