ART EXHIBITION "Jangarh Singh Shyam, A Conjuror’s Archive" > 2nd December 2018 to 12th January 2019

Venue : Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), 145, DLF South Court Mall, Saket
Artwork Jangarh Singh Shyam
Artwork by Jangarh Singh Shyam
Collection and image courtesy: Mark Tully and Gillian Wright, New Delhi
Time : 10:30 am - 6:30 pm (Closed on Monday)m Add to Calendar 02/12/2018 10:30 12/01/2019 18:30 Asia/Kolkata ART EXHIBITION "Jangarh Singh Shyam, A Conjuror’s Archive" Event Page : https://www.delhievents.com/2018/12/exhibition-jangarh-singh-shyam-conjuror-archive-knma-saket.html Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), 145, DLF South Court Mall, Saket, New Delhi -110017 DD/MM/YYYY - Exhibition on View

Entry : Free

Venue : Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), 145, DLF South Court Mall, Saket, New Delhi -110017

Venue Info : www.knma.in | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Malviya Nagar (Yellow Line) Exit Gate - 3'

Event Description : 
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) presents the exhibition ‘Jangarh Singh Shyam, A Conjuror’s Archive’

Co-curated by Dr. Jyotindra Jain and Roobina Karode 

The opening of the exhibition will be accompanied by a book launch, ‘Jangarh Singh Shyam, A Conjuror’s Archive,’ authored by Dr. Jyotindra Jain, who has had an extensive engagement with the works of Jangarh, having known him personally and following his practice.
KNMA has expanded its curatorial and exhibition program in the last few years. Since 2017 a special exhibition category has been introduced, to open up discourses around preceding pre-modern, traditional and indigenous art practices, and critically examine their influence and appropriations in urban contemporary art. The first of this kind was ‘Amruta Kalasha, Thanjavur and Other South Indian Paintings’. This year the exhibition on Jangarh problematizes ‘the tribal’ and ‘the contemporary’. Jangarh was born into a Pardhan Gond family in the village of Patangarh in Mandla district, of Eastern Madhya Pradesh. He is much discussed for his creation of a new style, which is named after him as ‘Jangarh Kalam’. A unique style when compared with traditional tribal art practices. Its initiation happened early when Jangarh met J. Swaminathan (who was then Director at Bharat Bhavan) during a talent scout. Swaminathan convinced Jangarh to relocate to Bhopal and work as a professional artist.Jangarh’s primary subjects were sometimes Gond deities like Thakur Dev, Bada Deo and Kalsahin Devi and at other times were applique styled portraits of animals, trees, folklore imagery and landscapes of the place where he grew up, placed next to objects and entities from urban settings, like aeroplanes.

The exposition is enriched with works brought in on loan from government and private institution collections and many private collectors. The exhibits include paintings on paper and canvas, terracotta murals, digital prints of photographs, Jangarh’s letters, and reproduction of mural images and theatre posters which incorporated Jangarh’s art work.
A substantial showing in this exhibition of Jangarh’s works has come from The Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore. Works from institutions such as Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal and The Crafts Museum in New Delhi are historically important as they were places where Jangarh worked on-site projects. Some in-situ murals will be reproduced for the exhibition. The book by Dr. Jain (who is a cultural historian and museologist), offers rare insight into the life and works of Jangarh Singh Shyam.
“This exposition is a witness to Jangarh’s excitement and angst, his hope and despair, which pulled him into a vortex of uncertainty and alienation from his familiar ground. His rise to fame, through the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, at Centre Pompidou, Paris in 1989 followed by subsequent multiple commissions from different art entities, with his journey ending tragically, when Jangarh committed suicide in Japan at the age of 39.  At a cursory glance while one may think he created the universe he knew, which was being amidst the flora and fauna in natural surroundings that were associated with his imagery, there are embedded stories, fables, anecdotes and myths that are unveiled beautifully by Dr. Jain”, mentions Roobina Karode, Chief Curator and Director, KNMA.
The ethos of the exposition at certain points resonate and harmonize with the spirit of the book on Jangarh and at other times take a self-determining course to generate unique visual experiences.

“Jangarh Singh, a young Pardhan artist with an inborn genius for drawing and painting and modelling … was “discovered” when the walls of his hut were found to be covered with paintings done by him”,  J. Swaminathan once stated, to what Dr. Jain points out, “The term ‘discovery’ as applied to encountering works by indigenous or vernacular artists by ethnographers, art historians and what Jangarh would call sheheri (urban) artists further stresses the hierarchised binary between the two and, concomitantly, the power relation inherent to the dynamic between the invasive ‘discoverer’ and the passive ‘discovered’, more explicitly visible in the histories of colonial voyages and geographical discoveries”.

One of his works from the late 1980s depict a serpent supporting the animate earth on its head where the stylized form is shaped out of numerous dots.  Jangarh introduced this entirely new style which generated a narrative instead of portraying a singular deity. Adding layers of chronicles to his subject, Jangarh often drew from the social and cultural changes that he observed around.

Related links : Art Exhibitions
ART EXHIBITION "Jangarh Singh Shyam, A Conjuror’s Archive" > 2nd December 2018 to 12th January 2019 ART EXHIBITION "Jangarh Singh Shyam, A Conjuror’s Archive" > 2nd December 2018 to 12th January 2019 Reviewed by DelhiEvents on Saturday, January 12, 2019 Rating: 5

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