Filmi Jagat at Art Heritage on Dec. 23

Filmi Jagat at Art Heritage 

Report by Santanu Ganguly: As a tribute to 100 years of Indian Cinema, Art Heritage is mounting two exciting exhibitions spread across three galleries.

FILMI JAGAT: Shared Universe of Hindi Cinema showcases a personal scrapbook from pre-independence times, together with a collection of film stills ranging from the 1950's-80's. The exhibition features lobby cards, songbooks and other film memorabilia drawn from the recently amassed collection of Rahaab Allana, and will be on view at the Shridharani Gallery from DECEMBER 23rd - 1st JANUARY 2014. A book by the same title will also be published by Niyogi Books, to appear in the first quarter of 2014 with text contributions by Kaushik Bhaumik, Debashree Mukherjee and a Foreword by Shyam Benegal (advance orders possible).

The other section features CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS (Art Heritage 1 & 2, Dec 23rd - Jan 21st, 2014) where Art Heritage has invited young artists to respond to the dynamic presence of Bollywood in our daily lives through a variety of mediums. More often than not, it is the film hoarding, the poster and the film stills, i.e. the iconic images along with the technology used to promote films that has excited the imagination of contemporary artists in this particular show.

In the process of evolving Contemporary Artworks we were compelled to draw on some historic material to be shown alongside the new work. Beginning with M. F. Husain's Culture of the Street, a magnificent portfolio of 20 signed photographs printed on glossy gold paper shot in the 1980s, it becomes clear that for Husain, the streets of Chennai with their enormous hoardings of South Indian movie stars were not only an integral part of the contemporary urban landscape, but became an essential part of the artist’s visual vocabulary as well.

Arpana Caur fittingly captures the allure and mystique generated by film posters in her canvas Pyar Hua, which is her take on the iconic Shree 420 poster, while Kanchan Chander’s embellished photographs of Bollywood Heroines strongly reiterate her evolving feminist vocabulary that relies on excessive tactility as an essential ingredient.

Moving onto a younger generation of artists, Bharti Verma’s otherwise vacant streets and homes of New Delhi are dominated by a historic legacy of film posters that are suspended like a giant, silent backdrop in the distance, whereas Sharmistha Dutta creates collages of 1970’s film posters pasted on ruined, blood-splattered city walls, against which she arranges vivid portraits of the common man. Using digital technology that pushes her work into the realm of the ‘super real,’ her images become metaphors of the violence and desecration that we experience daily. Provocatively juxtaposing photographs of contemporary reality with the Left-oriented cinema of the past 100 years, Aban Raza makes a political statement through a series of serigraphic posters. The melodramatic and farcical aspects of Bollywood cinema are reflected in the brightly colored, playful ceramics of Rahul Kumar and Shirley Bhatnagar. Finally, as a nostalgic tribute to the sense of beauty and poetry that 100 years of Indian cinema has brought to our lives, Rajiv Gautam creates a lyrical film hoarding especially for the occasion.

With this show Art Heritage celebrates both Performance and Art.