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This to encourage and honour individuals, partners or groups representing
different aspects of contemporary visual practices – painting including
traditional and folk forms, handicrafts, graphics, sculpture, photography,
internet, web and video art, as well as interdisciplinary practices.
Last three years Awardees |
Employing organic materials invested with tradition and history, Ranjani
creates multidimensional works that bring forth the metaphysical attributes of
residing within a changing physical environment. Shettar’s work embodies the
relationships between the future and past, exposing the permeability of the
often-distinct thresholds between craft and art, tradition and modernity, and
the physical and the spiritual.
Transforming simple and mundane materials into the magical, Shettar uses
materials such as muslin, tamarind powder, old car parts, lacquered wood and wax
beads in her installations, appearing effortlessly natural but at the same time
intricately crafted, to evoke the multiple, intersecting histories of the
material. It also alludes to cycles of consumption and commodification,
prompting analysis of what a technology-driven modernity’s relationship is to
nature.
Inspired by nature and drawn from experience, Shettar’s work combines movement
in form and content in which exacting lines sculpted in space are invested with
the attributes of the employed materials, as in Just a bit more, a
monumental installation of thread and tiny beads of wax or in Me, No, Not Me,
Buy Me, Eat Me, Wear Me, Have Me, Me, No, Not Me, in which old car parts are
woven into elegant and organic flowing forms.
Philippe Verne, Director of Dia Art Foundation, described : “The driving
force behind Ranjani’s work is a poetics of Space. Whether destined for public,
private, or even intimate settings, her art takes account of the physical-almost
molecular, organic-and emotional nature of the space in question”.
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Tejal is a visual artist working with video, photography, performance, sound
and installation. Her work, like herself, is feminist, queer and political. Her
works have been exhibited widely in museums, galleries and film festivals
including, Lost and Found - Queerying the Archive, Nikolaj Contemporary
Art Center, Copenhagen, 2009; Asian Triennial Manchester, Cornerhouse,
Manchester, 2008; City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts,
Ljubljana, 2007; Global Feminisms - the inaugural show at the Elizabeth Sackler
Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, NY, 2007; Saturday Live, Tate
Modern, London, 2006; Sub-Contingent at The Fondazione Sandretto Re
Rebaudengo, Turin, 2006; Indian Summer at The Ecole Nationale des Beaux
Arts, Paris, 2005. Solo exhibitions include “What are You?”, Thomas Erben
Gallery, New York and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, 2006; The
Tomb of Democracy, Alexander Ochs Gallery, Berlin, 2003. Her work is in the
collection of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Lekha and Anupam Poddar
collection, New Delhi and several private collections in India and abroad.
In 2003-4, she co-founded, organised and curated Larzish – India’s
premier International Film Festival of Sexuality and Gender Plurality. She grew
up in central India, Chhattisgarh, eventually moving to Mumbai in 1995. She
holds a BA in photography from RMIT, Melbourne and has been an Exchange Scholar
at the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently finishing her MFA part-time from Bard
College, New York, Tejal works out of her laptop and Mumbai city.
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Prajakta’s work dwells between the intimate world of an individual and the world
outside sometimes separated only by a wall. “Walls” intrigue her as they are a
witness to history and have traces of inhabitance embedded in them. As much as a
wall might be sealed, there tends to be porosity that allows things from the
outside to come home or vice versa. In between these public and private spaces
various elements transgress and remain as residues of this phenomena.
By transforming the everyday mundane experiences into fantastical imageries, her
attempts are to create escape routes within the chaos of the city. Her works try
to reflect a sense of irony experienced in day-to-day life.
Prajakta’s practice tries to trace these imperceptible elements that affect the
psyche of individuals. Her practice has involved painting, site-specific
sculptural installations and photography. In 2010, her work was exhibited in a
traveling museum show, “Indian Highway“ at the Herning Museum of Contemporary
Art, Denmark and the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Norway. Her work is also part of
“India Awakens - Under the Banyan tree “at The Essl Museum of Contemporary Art,
Austria.
Prajakta has also been featured in significant publications like ‘I’m Not There:
New Art from Asia,’(2010) Edited by Cecilia Alemani published by The Gwangju
Biennale Foundation. In 2009 she was also featured in Younger than Jesus : The
artist directory co-published by the New Museum and Phaidon.
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