In the inventive crucible of South Asian art today, we stand witness to a vanguard of artistic practices that have risen to prominence. The Arts Family, a not-for-profit organisation based in London, instituted the TAF Emerging Artist Award South Asia in 2021 to recognise the spirit of practices immanent to the region of South Asia. Juried by Julia Hutt, Malini Roy, Shanti Panchal, Lekha Poddar, Amit Kumar Jain and Neha Jaiswal, the award aims to incubate a conflux of artists and professionals for discursive exchange, networks of support and peer dialogue. This exhibition, for the first time in the subcontinent, brings together ten artists who were shortlisted for the inaugural edition of the award.
With an aesthetic inclination that is as varied as the region itself from which it emerges, the artists present a medley of paintings, prints, and sculptural works that strike a chord with the very fabric of South Asia. From excavating ownership and patriarchy through the anatomy of a Victorian dress to quarrying our spatial surroundings in questioning materialist agency; from etching a tapestry of our individual lives encountering surreal and mythical landscapes to exploring the disquietude that subverting notions of gender and sexuality brings; from mapping elusive bodily experiences and (un)curative tensions to contemplating a very literal unravelling of the self; and where meditative abstractions filter through the remains of the day as powerful yet affectionate compositions of calm, we are urged to—
breathe in the present, behold the future.
text @ Shankar Triparthi