Citizen Artist: Forms of Address
The exhibition Citizen Artist: Forms of Address is the second of 5 exhibitions curated by Geeta Kapur, celebrating 50 years of Chemould.
Gallery artists, Jitish Kallat, Rashid Rana, Shilpa Gupta, Pushpamala N, Gigi Scaria, Tushar Joag are part of the exhibition, and artists from outside of the gallery stable - Raqs Media Collective, Arun Kumar, Inder Salim, CAMP are also included in the show.
Formally Gallery Chemould and now Chemould Prescott Road has always been a contemporary gallery. When the founders, Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy started the gallery in 1963, they began with the early progressive artists - the then young contemporaries - Husain, Raza, Souza etc. The gallery was young, the artists were young.
Since the gallery was taken over by Shireen their daughter 25 years ago, the gallery has grown older, but the programme continues to be contemporary.
Citizen Artist: Forms of Address is an example of a gallery programme that is deeply entrenched in the now.
The artists included are political in their approach. They work directly with revolutionary ideas, sometimes anarchist, anti-fascist, anti-colonial and oftentimes issues that deal with feminism.
This multi-media exhibition while addressing the nation-state, looks at issues that concern borders, partition, surveillance, migration, corruption, the disenfranchised, dispossession, issues that deal with Kashmir, or the historical life incidents between Mao and Gandhi.
The gallery has over the years supported causes that deal with secularism, pluralism and has often taken a stand against fascists, dictatorial regimes, both personally and in their choice of artists.
The artist as citizen is at the fulcrum of this exhibition.
Shireen Gandhy Jungalwala