Zasha Colah is an art historian and curator. She co-founded the curatorial collaboratives and union of artists, Clark House in Bombay (2010), and Blackrice in Tuensang (2007-08). She has worked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya as the Curator of Indian Modern Art (2009-2011) and as Coordinator of Public Programs at the National Gallery of Modern Art Mumbai (2004-2005). Some recent curatorial projects include: the 2017 Pune Biennale (co-curated), I love you Sugar Kane (Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Mauritius, 2016), Prabhakar Pachpute. No, it wasn’t the locust cloud (Dome Gallery, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2016) An Error in Helsinki (Checkpoint Helsinki, 2016), Body Luggage (Steirischer Herbst Festival, Kunsthaus Museum Graz, 2016) and the program of Clark House, Bombay.
Prabhakar A. Kamble is a curator and artist who lives and works in Bombay and has exhibited at Clark House with the solo exhibition Dialogue (2017); the Dr. Fischer Peace Collection project in Israel and India (2017); Punascha Parry, Villa Vassilieff, Paris (2017); India Re-Worlded: Seventy Years of Investigating a Nation, Gallery Odyssey, Bombay (2017); International art festival Busan (2017) and a solo exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay (2016). In his recent projects he enacts a series of kinetic installations, drawings and performance under the title of Existential. By scripting space from lived experiences as an artist that is of privilege, because he came to read the writings of the Babasaheb as young student. He often paints large portraits of Dr. BR Ambedkar for social equality movements around Maharashtra and engages in the promotion of Dalit Literature and social movements. His performances are complex commentaries made in protest of public lynchings of Dalits and the murders of rationalist individuals.
This May, the Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to be a recipient of a 2018 PWIAS International Research Roundtable Award for the project Curating Critical Pedagogies. Conceived and organized by Curator of Academic Programs Shelly Rosenblum, this project interrogates critical practices in contemporary art and curating. The Roundtable will bring participants together for a five-day workshop as well as studio visits and conversations with Vancouver-based artists, curators, academics and critics. Impetus for the workshop developed out of an examination into the pedagogical role of the academic art gallery – one often thought of as an ideal space for experiments in curating that foster critical practices. However, what are critical practices in art and curating? What is the relationship between critique and the institution, and how should the academic gallery situate itself within this context? The public event will provide an opportunity to come together to work through inquiries surrounding public engagement in art and exhibitions.
A Curatorial Conversation with Clark House Initiative
All are welcome and admission is free.
Please join us at Pollyanna圖書館Library for a discussion with Zasha Colah and Prabhakar Kamble of Clark House Initiative, Bombay. Clark House Initiative is a curatorial collaborative and a union of artists concerned with ideas of freedom, that was established in 2010 by Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma. Strategies of equality have informed their work, while experiments in rereading histories, and concerns of representation and visibility are ways to imagine alternative economies and freedom. Clark House Initiative intends to actively recall political and artistic figures into contemporaneity and to question the recent rise of fascism in India based on exaggerated rumors of economic prosperity and nationalist pride. Membership in the union arises from basic tenets of humanism: Friendship, Anti-Racism, Sexual Freedom, Anti-Homophobia, Anti-Islamophobia, Feminism, Secularism and understanding the project of Modernism as an economic and political reality outside the occident.
This event is hosted by 221A and co-presented by the Belkin Art Gallery. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies for the award to support this Academic Program research project.
Zasha Colah is an art historian and curator. She co-founded the curatorial collaboratives and union of artists, Clark House in Bombay (2010), and Blackrice in Tuensang (2007-08). She has worked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya as the Curator of Indian Modern Art (2009-2011) and as Coordinator of Public Programs at the National Gallery of Modern Art Mumbai (2004-2005). Some recent curatorial projects include: the 2017 Pune Biennale (co-curated), I love you Sugar Kane (Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Mauritius, 2016), Prabhakar Pachpute. No, it wasn’t the locust cloud (Dome Gallery, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2016) An Error in Helsinki (Checkpoint Helsinki, 2016), Body Luggage (Steirischer Herbst Festival, Kunsthaus Museum Graz, 2016) and the program of Clark House, Bombay.
Prabhakar A. Kamble is a curator and artist who lives and works in Bombay and has exhibited at Clark House with the solo exhibition Dialogue (2017); the Dr. Fischer Peace Collection project in Israel and India (2017); Punascha Parry, Villa Vassilieff, Paris (2017); India Re-Worlded: Seventy Years of Investigating a Nation, Gallery Odyssey, Bombay (2017); International art festival Busan (2017) and a solo exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay (2016). In his recent projects he enacts a series of kinetic installations, drawings and performance under the title of Existential. By scripting space from lived experiences as an artist that is of privilege, because he came to read the writings of the Babasaheb as young student. He often paints large portraits of Dr. BR Ambedkar for social equality movements around Maharashtra and engages in the promotion of Dalit Literature and social movements. His performances are complex commentaries made in protest of public lynchings of Dalits and the murders of rationalist individuals.