Ishara Art Foundation and India Art Fair have collaborated to present a two-day symposium featuring the next generation of practitioners shaping contemporary art in South Asia.
Conceived as an online symposium and a knowledge platform, Staging the Contemporary aims to bring together a generation of artists, curators, collectives and writers born since the late-1980s to deliberate on the urgencies, methodologies and infrastructures that lay new foundations for cultural practices today.
The practices invited for the symposium stem from experiences of a generation that came of age in the wake of accelerated, world-changing events. Since the 21st century, the world has witnessed epochal shifts ranging from waves of economic recession, environmental crises, a new era of world wide web through personalised devices, the rise of religious fundamentalism and xenophobia, and a surge of social and political uprisings that include the Arab Springs, the Umbrella Movement, Black Lives Matter and Metoo.
In each of the instances, it is impossible to designate these scenarios and movements simply as local or global as they occupy both registers, urging new ways to think about the contexts of art, institutions and society.
Through a series of presentations, panel discussions and conversations, the symposium hopes to create a convening of various formal, material, philosophical and ideological positions taken by practitioners as a way to map emergent vocabularies and concepts that set the stage for contemporary discourse.
The programme explores questions pertaining to how artists and thinkers approach artistic infrastructures, support systems, collaborations, media, publics and the wider historical and geographic contours of their work. The event will lead up to an online platform that will launch in the summer of 2022 consolidating a database of artist-led initiatives, collectives, publication projects and institutions supporting the new generation of practitioners in South Asia.
Speakers in the symposium include Moonis Ahmad, Samira Bose, Nihaal Faizal, Aziz Hazara, Najrin Islam, Jasmine Nilani Joseph, Natasha Jozi, Natasha Malik, Annalisa Mansukhani, Maksud Ali Mondal, Senjuti Mukherjee, Kaushal Sapre, Protick Sarker, Mohit Shelare, Bazik Thlana, Aasma Tulika, Arushi Vats, Omer Wasim, Pramodha Weerasekera, Sultana Zana, Anga Art Collective, BlueJackal, Her Pixel Story, Kaali Collective, Offset Projects, Reliable Copy, Restricted Fixations, The Packet.
The organisers wish to thank Samira Bose, Najrin Islam, Natasha Malik, Annalisa Mansukhani, Sarker Protick, Pramodha Weerasekera and Arushi Vats for their valuable inputs in conceiving the symposium.
Staging the Contemporary: The Next Generation is made possible with the generous support of Shiv Nadar University.
