#Nancy Adajania

[shreyaajmani]

Nancy Adajania’s “Woman Is As Woman Does” and its Profound Influence

True to its name, “Woman Is As Woman Does” does not view gender as a static identity. It featured artists from all societal backgrounds, including those who maintain traditional studio practices alongside artists who produce zines and graphic novels, whilst also catering to a multilingual audience through a selection of works that spoke in diverse languages encompassing Bhojpuri, Magahi, Gujarati, Urdu, Hindi-Halbi, Marathi, Nepali, and English. “My curatorial projects are scripted like a polyphonic musical score, in which each artist makes her own individual contribution while taking her place in a larger composition shaped through counterpoint. The idea was to immerse the viewer in these debates and discussions at a visceral level” Adajania concludes.

Excerpt from Mash.

Text by Shreya Ajmani

[khwabgah]

To the possible surprise of those who believe that the history of new media art in India began in the 1990s, I would like to revisit a moment in the late 1960s, when the polymath artist, designer and institution builder Dashrath Patel was engaged in a heroic struggle to present a multi-screen projection. The critic Sadanand Menon writes, ‘In 1967, Dashrath… creat[ed] a 9-screen 360° projection of "A Journey in India" for the India pavilion at the Montreal Fair, with no access to high-tech equipment. Faced with the task of having to create a "circarama" effect, he devised a plywood housing for nine cameras which he would wear around his neck. Linked to a single remote shutter release apparatus, the cameras facing different directions would go off simultaneously to create the effect of "shooting in the round".’

I retrieve this pioneering moment from the exhibition history of world art fairs as part of a prehistory for new media practices in India that lies outside the domain of the visual arts constructed by its gallery-sanctioned practitioners. I intend, therefore, to emphasize the deficits of reception that have prevented the Indian art world from recognizing and embracing Patel’s transmedia experiments as a model of alternative practice.2 This despite Patel’s contribution to the art world as a respected contemporary of M.F. Husain, V.S. Gaitonde and Tyeb Mehta.

My example demonstrates the pernicious effect of the Chinese walls separating different sectors of the Indian cultural domain. Indian designers and architects have long treated the trade fair pavilion as a locus of innovation that feeds directly into their ongoing practice.3 By contrast, Indian artists, struggling to secure the high, inviolable ground of studio practice, have typically stigmatized any seemingly ‘commercial’ demand made on the artistic imagination (excepting from the gallery system, of course) as a dilution or contamination. This Brahminical aversion promoted the cult of the single author and aesthetic autonomy, a distaste for collaboration, a segregation between the ‘pure’ fine arts and the ‘commercial’ applied arts, and the condescension of academy trained artists towards subaltern practitioners denigrated as ‘folk’ and ‘tribal’ artists. To the Indian art world of the late 1960s, the 1967 Montreal World Fair would occupy the questionable realm of trade fairs and expos.

[sbowen]

Nelly Sethna

Nelly earned a scholarship to study at the renowned design school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she became immersed in the ethos of Scandinavian modernism and Marianne Strengell’s experimental, textural approach to fiber arts. Curated by Nancy Adajania, The Unpaved, Crusty, Earthy Road is research-driven retrospective is a first for the artist, bringing together three decades of her…

[priyasriartgallery]

Throwback to 2016, Priyasri Art Gallery released a publication on the works of Akbar Padamsee ‘Where the Lines Fall’ that contextualised his journey as an artist. The book has an essay by Art Historian Nancy Adajania . This book is available on demand and is a collectible with more than 100 monochrome works of the late artist. The graphic presentation is of par excellence, thanks to Khurshed Poonawala from Commercial Engravers, Mumbai. This year's accordance with our gallery's passion towards books there will be one more publication that will be released by the end of the year. Untill then be safe and be positive. For sales inquiry for the book 'Where the lines Fall’ email us on priyasriartgallery@gmail.com Picture of Akbar Padamsee at Priyasri Art Gallery as he glances through the book 'Where the Lines Fall' over a cup of chai. Picture Credits - Yogisha Motla

[savesgu]

I Believe There Are Angels Among Us Shirt

I Believe There Are Angels Among Us Shirt

I Believe There Are Angels Among Us Shirt,Hoodie And Sweater The i believe there are angels among us shirt! Walking around not talking to me about colors, Mehlli Gobhai recalls at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, effectively managed and run by Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania, by Prescott. because of the feeling that I was in a time machine and I was pulled back into my own life and…

[soniaaristo]

Curator's Essay: Nancy Adajania/National Gallery Of Modern Art, Mumbai

Curator’s Essay: Nancy Adajania/National Gallery Of Modern Art, Mumbai

I first read Hans-Georg Gadamer as a student at the Elphinstone College library in Mumbai in the late 1980s. At Elphinstone, I realized for the first time what that obstinate noun “privilege” meant: to sit next to a student who came to class barefoot; to sense the struggle of “vernies” — a derogatory term for students who came from non-Anglophone backgrounds — trying to grasp the humanities in a…

[priyasriartgallery]

"At this stage of the artists long journey, we begin to believe that the truth of his artistic expression is the path of an ascetic. Just like the spider creates a web outside himself the same way Akbar Padamsee creates his work outside himself. His works are his manifestations, a mean to an end himself. I am the doer and I am the onlooker quotes Akbar with solemnity in his voice.”

- Priyasri Patodia , You are what your deep driving desire is, say our scriptures ,Where the Lines Fall.

Cherishing memories of Akbar Padamsee's birthday month and celebrations on 12 April 2018 at Akbar Padamsee's Studio, along with Bhanu Padamsee, Nancy Adajania , Sudhir Patwardhan, Shanta Patwardhan, Saryu Doshi, Pheroza Godrej, Abhijeet Gondkar.