Goa
lucks out with ‘Games of Chance’, curated by Leandre D’Souza at the
Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts. The mega anniversary show, hosted by patrons
of Sunaparanta, Dipti and Dattaraj Salgaocar, opened with a lovely concert,
featuring a jazz soiree by renowned percussionist Matteo Fraboni, performing
with his Septet, including Maria Meireles (Vocals), Xavier Peres (Keyboard),
Gary Plumley (Sax), Antonio Zapata (Trumpet), Sanjay Joseph (Guitar), Neil
Fernandes (Bass) and Matteo Fraboni (Drums/Congas/Vocals).
Beguiled by the music, viewers were then
free to explore the exhibition, a world of intrigue, mystery and the unknown.
As the curator explains, the show “summons artists to force us out of the
mundane and plunge us into the storms of randomness where luck and misfortune
go hand-in-hand. This show invites a shift of focus and an invocation into the
mysteries of that moment through visual media that includes video, sculpture,
painting, photography and performance.”
‘Games of Chance’ brings together India’s
leading art galleries, organised in partnership with EXperimenter, GALLERYSKE,
Nature Morte, Project 88, The Guild Art Gallery, Galerie
Mirchandani+Steinruecke and Vadehra Art Gallery and features riveting
practices, ideas and projects by 24 visual and performance artists, video
makers and photographers including Ravi Agarwal, Vinod Balak, Atul Bhalla,
Astha Butail, Faiza Butt, Neha Choksi, Raqs Media Collective, Rohini Devasher,
Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Adip Dutta, Sanchayan Ghosh, Ranbir Kaleka,Tara
Kelton, Nalini Malani, Pallavi Paul, Rakhi Peswani, Ram Rahman, T V Santhosh,
Surabhi Saraf, Moonis Ahmad Shah, Sudarshan Shetty, Mariam Suhail and L N
Tallur.
While there is much to absorb, engage with
and enjoy, do walk through Sanchayan Ghosh’s life size installation, ‘Doosra –
The Other Maze-II’ located in the garden of the Centre. The maze has been
created like an artificial garden replete with sounds carrying stories that provoke
us to think about ideas of the other (Doosra), constructed from India’s
colonial past and assimilated into our present imagination. Swarms of
butterflies are periodically encountered, transforming the work into a site of
birth, chance and death.
When you think about it, birth and death are
really a game of chance. L N Tallur references the philosophy of karma in
‘Sedimentation’, his sculpture of a frog spitting out coins. To ward off bad
luck, you are supposed to feed coins into the frog’s open mouth and deposit the
sediment of your bad karmic residue. T V Santosh creates a ‘History Lab’,
complete with a ticking bomb, obliquely referring to how history is written,
shaped, invented and distilled while eventually leading to our inevitable end.
Tara Kelton’s playful ‘Magic Carpet’, a robot vacuum cleaner freely moves
around the floor of the gallery, interrupting movement and reinforcing current
issues of the invasive and dictatorial nature of technology that has taken over
our lives.
Atul Bhalla’s stunning installation ‘The
Lowest Depths: Objects of Fictitious Togetherness-1’ revolves around water and
ideas of borders and boundaries between countries. It is also a story of the
residual memory of Partition. Innumerable water glasses are placed on a circular
table, evoking a metaphorical reference to the Hindu, Muslim and Punjabi
communities drinking from the same glass before they were split and divided. Do
not miss Pallavi Paul’s evocative installation, ‘Far too Close’, where viewers
walk into booths (meant to be the ocean) enclosed by actual emergency blankets,
given to refugees to allay shock. The whole experience of being engulfed by the
‘sea’, encountering the phrase ‘Sea is the First Citizen’ and listening to
voices speaking about freedom and peace create an unsettling feeling, immersing
one in questions about belonging and citizenship.
‘Games of Chance’ certainly does not make it
easy on viewers and you will be required to spend time and focused attention to
grasp the impact of each artwork. It is definitely worth engaging with though
for providing such rich material to mull over as well as forcing viewers “out
of the mundane”.
Games of Chance is on at the Sunaparanta
Centre for the Arts, Altinho until March 27, 2020.
Berlin based artist, illustrator, designer
and storyteller Allen Shaw was in Goa recently to continue working on his ‘Goa
Sketchbook’. The international artist has been playing with the idea for a
decade and has a body of sketches ready to be compiled into a book later this
year.
He says, “Travelling and sketching feed my
gypsy soul. And when I flip though the pages of my travelogues, I see myself in
conversation with spaces, places and people who walk through these pages.”
Allen’s quest has taken him around the
globe, as he sketches his way from the majestic mountains of Leh to the rice
fields of Wajima in Japan. He has travelled nearly everywhere, drawing places,
cultures and people from Poland to Kutch, Bosnia to New York.
The nomadic artist began to publish his
city-based sketchbooks three years ago and has so far worked on books on
Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Morbi as well as on Erlangen and Berlin. In Goa to catch
the essence of the place from an artist’s perspective, Allen says he wants to
draw different aspects of Goa – its stories, people, places, architecture,
heritage and more. He says, “I am glad I am finally doing it. It’s like a
report from a pilgrimage to this exotic land.” Keep an eye out for this sure to
be wonderful ode to Goa.
If you’re in the mood for an art themed
holiday, try something different and keep an eye out for ‘Vacation Hues Art
Retreat’ by Shubhra Chaturvedi. The ex HR professional took a leap of faith and
turned full time artist and photographer. In the process of discovering her own
inner artist, she also created a retreat for people interested in finding and
developing their own artistic voice. She recently concluded a wonderful retreat
in Sawantwadi at the lush homestay Konkan Art Retreat. Shubhra provides all the
art material, encouraging participants to go wild with colour and form and
venture forth boldly to paint. “It’s a canvas, not life, so don’t worry about
it getting spoiled or making a mistake,” says the charming artist, who is
currently under the mentorship of leading artist Vasundhara Tewari Broota and
has participated in a number of solo and group shows as well as created public
art installations at five Delhi Metro stations.
Holding workshops and retreats with a view to help
others view the world through the prism of art, she also conducts sessions on
using art as a tool to meditate, de-stress, heal and discover yourself.
