The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art and Korean Cultural Centre India are delighted to announce the recipients of the Grants for Exhibition Proposals 2018.
Exhibition Proposals 2018 is aimed at providing a platform for art practitioners who want to generate enquiries, discussions and experimental practice via an exhibition of six-week's duration at KCCI, New Delhi in 2018. The open call was made in three categories for practitioners from SAARC Countries and Korea under Category A and B respectively, while Category C had a thematic focus on the ‘South Asian Contemporary’.
This year’s jury, comprising Jeebesh Bagchi, artist, curator from Raqs Media Collective; Sonia Khurana, video and performance artist, Junebum Park, video artist and currently Art Advisor for KCCI, Jagadeesh Reddy, artist and curator at KCCI; and Vidya Shivadas, Director, FICA, deliberated on the applications received. The jury found this grant call an exciting opportunity to think through ‘exhibition practices’ and position KCCI as a site for intellectual production as well as to rethink, among other things, the notion of the ‘region’.
The Grant for Category A: India and Other SAARC Countries has been awarded to the collective comprising Bangladesh-based curators Tanzim Wahab and Hadrien Diez for their project titled ‘Dis-place’. Touching upon the thematic of displacement, the proposed exhibition attempts to look at the possibility of a post-historical space and function as a symbolic “act of discharge” on Bengal and Bangladesh’s fractious histories and geographies. Combining art exhibition, archive spatialisation and public discussion, the project intends to examine the urgent points of controversy within these two fields and re-contextualise them through new threads and original interpretations around themes of border delimitation, the identity of a place, dis-placement, migration and the like.
The Grant for Category B: Korea has been awarded to artist Dorothy M Yoon for her project titled ‘Dear Kali’. Born in Busan, South Korea, the artist had her formative years strongly shaped by Western influences. Through her project, she foregrounds the complex intersections and ramifications of this cultural fusion on her sense of identity. The mise-en-scene in Dorothy’s photographic work is fantastical and reveals her staple concern with hybrid identities as they manifest through an amalgam of visual markers. She photographs Asian women in both their natural, characteristic features and the stereotypical Caucasian blue eyes and blonde hair they have come to adapt from mediatised influences. In this fashion, Dorothy confronts the public with questions about Eurocentric prejudices and misconceptions that are cultivated against the ‘other’ by using the formal liberties allowed by digital photography.
The Grant for Category C: Focus Theme on ‘Southeast Asian Contemporary’ has been awarded to Delhi-based artist Ish S for his collective project titled ‘Southeast Asian Sound Art and Electronic Music’. Spanning a range of sound installations, live performances, workshops and presentations, the project aims to use interdisciplinary channels to promote the contemporary transcultural strains of electronic music and sound art by fostering a dialogue between artists and collectives in Southeast Asia. Some of the artists and creative collectives/ organisations that Ish hopes to involve in this project include HONF Foundation (House of Natural Fibers Foundation) from Jakarta/ Indonesia and Six Tones from Vietnam, among others.
We congratulate the winning applicants and look forward to these exciting exhibitions in 2018.
About the Recipients:
Tanzim Wahab: Bangladeshi writer and curator, Tanzim Wahab’s interests focus on the symbiosis of pedagogy and artistic production in the South-Asian context. His research interests encompass the vernacular practice and photographic historiography, specifically early staged photography of South Asia. Tanzim is the Chief Curator of Arts Programme, Bengal Foundation. Tanzim has been a fellow of several programs including Art for Social Change, USA, Art Think South Asia (ATSA), India etc. Hadrien Diez specializes as a curator in contemporary art from Bangladesh. His practice often attempts to put accepted narratives in perspective through informal histories and individual memories. He is also a cultural journalist whose texts focus on the practice of artists and collectives from the “global south”. Hadrien earned a Master’s in Philosophy from the University of Brussels and one in International Politics from Sciences Po Paris.
Born in Busan, Dorothy M Yoon completed her MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2007, preceded by an MFA in Sculpture from Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, Korea. Her Exhibitions include ‘Scent from the Eastern Sea’, Nomoregrey, London Coup de Pouce, Galarie Suty, France, 2007; ’13 Blondes’ at Gallery S, Seoul, Korea and Andrew James Art, Shanghai, China, 2008; ‘Animamix Biennale’, Shanghai MoCA and Today Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2010; ‘Tomorrow Korea’ at Art 33, Seoul, ‘New Photography in Korea II’ at La Galerie Paris Beijing, Paris in 2011, Rococo No.33B’at Gallery Hyundai Window, 2011 and ‘Girls from North and Boys from South’ at Trunk Gallery in 2015 amongst others. She has had several other exhibitions including at the Seoul Museum of Art and the Amelia Johnson Contemporary.
Ish Shehrawat (Ish S) is a composer, sound artist and a musician from New Delhi, India. He is also an electronic musician and has trained as a classical guitar player. Producing these creative works under different pseudonyms and projects like – edGeCut, diFfused beats, Khayali pulao and 4th World Orchestra, he creates, collaborates and produces a wide spectrum of music and sounds ranging from Jazz to classical and from ambient to experimental electronic music and has developed his own style over a period of time. He curates the ‘Sound Reasons Festival’ for sound art and experimental electronic music. His sound installations and compositions for contemporary dance have been presented and performed at the Bhau Dhaji Lad Museum, Bombay | IAC, Malmo | Center Pompidou, Paris | Theater Gessnerallee, Zurich | Dampfzentrjecale, Bern | Kulturzentrum Schützenmatt,Olten | Theater Phoenix, Steckborn, amongst others.
