Achieving Zero: The loud silences of art from the 2020 India Art Fair
Ankon Mitra: The Parting of Galaxies
In a country where the loud, brash voices are exceedingly muting dissent, the best of the 2020 India Art Fair presented art’s response for peace, sustainability, and inclusiveness.
Out of the lineup spanning thousands of works from several galleries around the country and beyond at the 2020 India Art Fair in Delhi, a highlight was Chennai-based artist Dhasan’s collection ‘Fragments of the Shunya’. Shunya, the number zero, the concept of nothingness. Working with paper on canvas, Dhasan’s collection was a rigorous exploration of this nothingness, about how the absence of everything else can be a space for the presence of peace.
Featuring work by past masters like Raja Ravi Varma and MF Husain, as well as well-known contemporary artists like Ankon Mitra and Ravinder Reddy, the 12th edition of the Indian Art Fair had a little bit for everyone: traditional paintings on canvas, dimension-bending structures, tech-infused multimedia, and so much more.
For many of the contemporary works, a uniting thread was a call for peace, of protest and empathy through art. What Dhasan saw in the concept of the smallest entity of nothingness was captured by Ankon Mitra is the macro-size of the universe, the living cosmos in his The Parting of Galaxies. Soma Das focused on environmental and water issues in Stupa, while Baaraan Ijlal collected stories to make the individual universal in her Hostile Witness series.
Of course, the tragedy of our times is that dissent and protest continues to be silenced and suppressed. At the Art Fair itself, an interactive piece by the Post-Art Project founded by Gargi Chandola and Jefrey Yaman was disrupted and removed by the Delhi Police after complaints of it being inspired by the Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Art communicates reality in a way words fail to, shaking, stirring, challenging, and reflecting the world around us. Even with the disruption and the larger threat of government policing creativity, art will continue to evolve and protest in new, untranslatable ways.
Here were some of the most memorable exhibits from the recent fair.
Black Stars are Shinging Very Bright IV - Abhishek Narayan Verma
Baaraan Ijlal - Hostile Witness, Esplanade Mansion/ Watson’s Hotel Kala Ghoda/Bombay/Mumbai
Biplap Sarkar - Be Waiting
C. Bhagyanath - “Shows are going on” - II
Dhasan - Fragments Of The Shunya
KS Radhakrishnan - The Ramp: Maiya as Selkit - Guardian Goddess
Soma Das - Stupa-3
Probir Gupta - The Cage of Agony
Raja Ravi Varma - Vishnu On Sheshnag
Waleed Zafar - Value
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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in The Literary Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. Karan is currently working on his first novel. Twitter: @karanmadhok1
