Sheela Gowda, And…, 2007
Installation view, documenta 12
Kassel, Germany
Photograph: Roman März
Courtesy of the artist
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway is pleased to announce 'Postulates of Contiguity,' the first European solo exhibition by the Bangalore based artist Sheela Gowda scheduled at OCA from 29 April through 26 June 2010. Curated by OCA's director Marta Kuzma, the project takes the form of a dialogue between two works – And… (2007), a languorous serpentine rope produced from individual threads and needles that coils throughout the exhibition space to intercede the spectator's path and field of vision, and Best Cutting (2008), a display that combines a constructed newspaper, The Chronic Chronicle, overlaid by tailoring patterns. Both works asymptotically share the support of a material line to formulate a postulate on space that undermines continuity and coherence to instead, privilege notions of contingency making unstable logical connectives and inferred certainties.
The project reverberates within a Euclidean space between the contiguous and the abstract underscoring the conceptual and narrative underpinnings within the respective works. The montage-based Best Cutting, didactic and seemingly archival, set against And… as a cipher for the schema of alienation, points to the consciousness building central to Gowda's praxis. The artist's integration of tactile elements – threads, hair, traditional kumkum dyes, patterns, weaving techniques, the imperceptible attention to meticulous detail – may provoke an instinctual interpretation within a material tradition of craft and textile making. Yet, to do so would inevitably short circuit the wider meaning of Gowda's practice that transposes these elements into social objects and practices located within a network of production and distribution framed in relation to India's socio-political legacy. Gowda's work serves as a query into an India less familiar to wider art communities – an inquiry into the political and social intricacies – the complexities in, for example, the State of Uttar Pradesh in the northern region; the polemics around the Bharatiya Janata Party; the irony made apparent within the Best Bakery Case and the person of Zahira Sheikh, a witness of communal carnage later sentenced to a jail term; the expulsion of Taslima Nasreen from Bangladesh; the political successes of the Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi; the reflexive issues inherent to the land policy toward the rural poor. Throughout, Gowda leans upon the theory of state as a code or measure to privilege the state versus the spiritual, the apolitical, if not altogether anti-political goal of moksa, as an absolute.
Sheela Gowda (b. 1957, Bhadravati, India, lives and works in Bangalore, India) was a former resident of OCA's ISP Programme in autumn 2009, with the aim to produce a project for OCA as part of her residency . Gowda studied in Santiniketan – a crucible of Modernism in India – as well as in London at the Royal College of Arts. Her exposure to different traditions has resulted in a practice that articulates in complex ways the relationship between diverse art historical genealogies as well as between avant-garde practices and the everyday. In the early 1990s, Gowda used unconventional materials through which she expressed the angst and melancholy caused by local socio-political tensions. In her own words, Gowda seeks a 'specificity within abstraction' that avoids strident statements and instead reveals meaning through suggestion. Gowda's work has been included in documenta 12 , Kassel, 2007; 'Fare Mondi//Making Worlds…', the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009; 'Indian Highway' at The Serpentine Gallery, London, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway, 2009 and Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark, 2010; the 2009 Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; 'Textiles: Art and Social Fabric', Contemporary Art, Antwerp; 'Santhal Family: Positions Around an Indian Sculpture', MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium, 2008; and 'HORN PLEASE: Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art', Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Switzerland, 2007-08 among others. Gowda was recently featured in issue 22 (autumn/winter 2009) of Afterall, a journal of art, context and enquiry published by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London.
'Sheela Gowda: Postulates of Continguity' has been supported by O3–funds as underwritten by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for enhancing collaboration in the contemporary art field with professional artists in countries designated by the MFA. The purpose of the O3–funds as allocated to OCA is to further develop cooperation and professional networking between OCA and the constituency of artists, independent cultural producers, and organisations that are located in designated countries. This includes but is not limited to 'professional research visits by cultural producers, artists, and curators', 'short-term residencies for cultural producers and artists', seminars, conferences, art projects, workshops, etc. that focus on the further development of professional exchange and networking between and among countries', and 'project development (and pilot projects) on an international scale.'
'Sheela Gowda: Postulates of Contiguity' is designed and installed by tenfinger, Brussels, Belgium. www.tenfinger.be.
For more information on the exhibition, please contact Marthe Tveitan at marthe@oca.no.