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Ark and Reliable Copy, with support from Rubamin Foundation, announce an open call for the third workshop led by CAMP

The Ark Foundation for the Arts instituted Jyotsna Bhatt Ceramics Award in 2021. The award has been set up to platform, encourage and create dialogue around compelling Indian art practices focused in the medium of ceramics. The award is established in [...]

Gallery Ark and Reliable Copy, with the support of Rubamin Foundation, present the first module of Propositions: Methods and Materials, “Drawing Conversations” with Gagan Singh. Workshop Dates: Feb 05-09, 2020 Drawing Conversations will explore the various dimensions of drawing through an exploration of the surrounding physical site, the play of word and line, the nuances of material, and the thinking that happens in the process of drawing. Is it possible to articulate the unseen moments of how thinking erupts or develops? How do we capture ideas, express emotions, build structures, and live spatial depth, while shuttling between these spaces? These are the questions around which Drawing Conversations will revolve. We are now accepting applications for participation in the first module. Application Deadline: Dec 31, 2019 Applications to be mailed to: propositions.info@gmail.com. For more information, visit the following link: reliablecopy.org/Propositions

Kavita Singh presented her lecture, “Real Birds in Imagined Gardens: Mughal Painting Between Persia and Europe”, on Mughal Painting and how it has influenced by and in turn itself influenced European Artistic traditions. The lecture covered the works by Abd As’Samad and went on to speak about how patronage from the Mughal courts enabled a synthesis of Western academicism with regional Aesthetics. Kavita Singh is Professor of Art History and Dean of the School of Arts and Aesthetics, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. An alumna of the Faculty of Fine Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, from where she received her MFA, she went on to complete her PhD from the Punjab University. Her research interests include the history and historiography of Indian painting, religious objects and secularization of art; religious revivalism and its cultural forms; heritage discourse, and the history and politics of museums. She has been a Research Editor for Marg Publications before her appointment as a member of the faculty at JNU, and as a Visiting Guest Curator at the San Diego Museum of Art she co-curated the exhibition Power and Desire: South Asian Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney 3rd Collection.

Dastan-e Karn Az Mahabharat the new presentation by Team Dastangoi is a unique and unprecedented effort at many levels. It is after some considerable time that the Mahabharata is being orally recited from the stage. Unlike the Ramayana, oral recitations and performance of the Mahabharata are rare and they are rarer still in Urdu, the base language of this Dastangoi show. Dastangoi is a tradition of Urdu storytelling that was immensely popular in the Indian Subcontinent in the 19th century after which the medium saw a decline. Its revival is credited to author, actor, and historian Mahmood Farooqi, who in 2005 brought the form back to the limelight. The term Dastangoi originates from the Persian words, Dastan, story; and goi, to narrate. Central to Dastangoi is the narrator who narrates a story – often an epic – scripted in a manner that combines prose, poetry, expressive gestures. The texts are a synthesis of Urdu, Persian, and regional languages such as Awadhi. The Dastango, or narrator, occupied the central spot in a gathering from where they would elaborately explain the plot of the epic, peppered with quips and quotes. Mahmood Farooqi, an accomplished author and contemporary Dastango who took upon himself the task of reviving the art form, presented the Dastan-e-Karn Az Mahabharat at Ark on March 18, 2018. based on the life of the much-wronged son of the sun god and Kunti. Discriminated against for all the wrong reasons, Karna comes out looking like the hero even though he was not on the side that won and was also perceived to be in the wrong. Having placed it in context, there were many things that the Dastan offered. It was a trailblazing display of Farooqui’s hold over the languages as he effortlessly slipped from Urdu to Sanskrit to Persian to Arabic and Hindi. The Dastan drew upon a variety of sources including the original Mahabharata and its Hindi translation. In Urdu, parts of the posthumous translation of the Mahabharata by the Pakistani writer Kamran Aslam as well as Tota Ram Shayan’s 200-year-old verse. In Hindi, the sources included, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s magnum opus on Karna and Rashmi Rathi, Dharmvir Bharti’s Andha Yug. It also featured parts of Razmnama, Emperor Akbar’s translation of the Mahabharata and Shivaji Sawant’s bestselling Marathi novel Mrityunjay. Farooqui managed to create a rich tapestry of languages by virtue of which he sketched pictures across the stage.