“After Midnight” will focus on art from 1947-1997.
By American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: The Queens Museum has announced that it will open an entire exhibition entitled “After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India (1947-1997)” in January 2015, which will highlight important works of art and track the growing modernity of India during its first 50 years of independence.
Malini Shah, Sudhir Vaishnav, Sunil Modi and other community members along with Tom Finkelpearl, President and Executive Director, Debra Wimpfheimer, Director Stategic Partnerships, Hitomi Iwasaki, Director and Curator and Manjari Sihare Curatorial Manager.
In a statement, the museum explained that the timeframe was chosen because its beginning and end dates are significant checkpoints in Indian history. The year 1947 is obviously important because it is when Indian gained independence from the British, but also because it saw the birth and rise of the Progressive art movement in India. The year 1997, when India turned 50, was marked by “economic liberalization, political instability, the growth of a religious right wing, as well as a newly globalizing art market and international biennial circuit, in which Indian artists had begun to participate.”
“After Midnight will be the first exhibition large-scale examination of Indian art in the United States prominently featuring the Modern masters, core members of the Progressives including M.F. Husain, S. H. Raza, F.N. Souza, and their extended circle of friends such as Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, V.S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, and Akbar Padamsee,” the museum, formerly known as the Queens Museum of Art, said in a press release. “The contemporary artists under consideration are CAMP, Nikhil Chopra, Desire Machine Collective, Atul Dodiya, Anita Dube, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Tushar Joag, Jitish Kallat, Amar Kanwar, Prajakta Potnis, Sreshta Premnath, Raqs Media Collective, Sharmila Samant, Mithu Sen, Tallur L. N., Asim Waqif.”
The “After Midnight” exhibition will debut on January 25 of next year, and run for just over one month, ending on May 3. Its curator is Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala, who is currently based in Mumbai. She holds a B.A. in psychology from the University of Bombay, an M.A. in the same field from the University of Bombay’s St. Xavier’s College, another M.A. in “creative curating” from the University of London’s Goldsmiths College, yet another M.A. in art history from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where her dissertation was entitled “Postcolonial Palimpsests: Historicizing Biennales and Large-Scale Exhibitions in a Global Age.”
“After Midnight, while a large-scale survey show itself, adopts a critical position against blockbuster exhibitions of Indian art that have undertaken tokenist representation of India, or have attempted to illustrate the nation through its art,” said a museum spokesperson. ” Instead of capitulating to the market forces and the need of the West to “present” and “frame” Indian cultural practices, the intent of the exhibition is to dismantle the stereotypical nationalist presentations of India. The exhibition attempts to produce and present art practices, dialogues, and questions emerging from an Indian context to be embraced within the larger global framework of modernity.”
The Queens Museum is located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and was established in 1972. It boasts a permanent collection of artefects and works of art that numbers close to 10,000.
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