The Glass Menagerie | CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES IN GLASS
28 JANUARY, 2023 - 2 FEBRUARY, 2023
Bikaner House New Delhi
2 FEBRUARY, 2023 - 30 August, 2023
Viewing Room Online | Viewing by appointment only
This path breaking group exhibition of contemporary Indian artists working in glass explores distinctively different approaches to manipulating this miraculous material. Glass may be fragile, but its silicate origins as grains of sand endure and transform on geological timescales that dwarf our man made world. Being both solid and permeable to light, glass is the perfect poetic interface between metaphoric worlds.
Viewing Room | Enduring legacy: navarasa in contemporary indigenous practices
THURSDAY, 24 FEBRUARY TO SUNDAY, 30 OCTOBER, 2022
Rasa can be explained as the emotional state of mind, and has formed an important aspect of Indian aesthetic understanding for centuries. The Navarasa, or the nine emotional states, come from the treatise of Bharata Muni, the Natyashastra. The chapters detail the aesthetically determined practice of diverse arts recognised as part of drama, containing within it dance, music and poetics, along with general directions of form and expression.
VIEWING ROOM | POETRY OF LIVED SPACES, A BRUSH WITH THE LENS
TUESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 2021 TO TUESDAY, 22 MARCH 2022
If these walls could talk, they would tell us about the history of their past… If the ceilings looking down upon the people within the structures, could tell us about the lives played-out beneath their protective arches… If the staircase that leads mysteriously to somewhere could guide us… up or down to their final destination… Then we could discover stories that perhaps have never been written down.
VIEWING ROOM | SHEKH HIFZUL KABEER
Thursday, 6 August to Friday, 6 October 2021
Artist Shekh Hifzul Kabeer artfully employs mythology to address the pain and anxiety of the current situation with the pandemic. A number of experts are of the opinion that sweeping societal change will make life worse for most people as greater inequality, rising authoritarianism and rampant misinformation take hold in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. A small portion believe and are hopeful that life will be better in a ‘tele-everything’ world where workplaces, health care and social activity improve despite the frustrating times we are witnessing.
VIEWING ROOM | RAJESH SONI
Monday, 6 September to Saturday, 6 November 2021
In India , only a handful of artist-photographers are still continuing the legacy of this genre and tradition.Rajesh Soni as one of them is the 3rd generation descendant of skilled artist- photographers. His grandfather Prabhu Lal Soni (1905-1958) had worked as a court photographer and painter for the late Maharana Shri Bhupal Singh of Mewar in Udaipur.He passed down his skills of hand-painting to his son, Lalit, who himself passed them down to his son Rajesh.
VIEWING ROOM | HEMI BAWA | BODIES OF LIGHT
Sunday, 22 November 2020 to friday, 15 january 2021
If one were to think of making art as a durational performance, it would find resonance in Hemi Bawa’s working process. When creating glass sculpture, she is the narrator and protagonist; the studio is her stage – the fiery heart of the furnace, her one powerful prop – or call it the metaphorical magician’s box from which marvels emerge.