Mirror/Maze: Echoes of Song, Space and Spectre

About

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents Mirror/Maze: Echoes of Song, Space and Spectre in the Noida space. With an overwhelming reception from viewers in Saket, New Delhi the life of the exhibition is being extended and expanded with the inclusion of additional works. Bringing together works of 24 artists from KNMA’s diverse collection the
exhibition will open to the public on Thursday, January 25 and will be on display at KNMA,Noida till the end of March, 2024.

This exhibition owes its stimulus to artists and the provocations they present through their distinctive forms of practice, initiating a re-thinking about art and its presence in our lives. Their self-willed journeys draw us into the unique and strange worlds they create through ‘affect states’ of sound and silence, meditation and labour, stillness and action, emptiness and fullness. By disrupting the sense of space/place, de-stabilising the notion of a fixed image, accelerating and slowing down the experience of time, they raise our consciousness towards the complexities encountered in our experience of the everyday along with the lingering fear of the unknown.

Curated by Roobina Karode (Director and Chief Curator, KNMA) with Avijna Bhattacharya, Debashree Banerjee, Madhurima Chaudhuri and Agastaya Thapa, the exhibition allows the viewers to engage with a wide spectrum of artistic experiences, from drawing, paintings and sculptures to digital presences, Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computer coded hyperrealities.

The nebulous ground of the exhibition draws viewers into the moving narrative around an enduring but difficult relationship (Dayanita Singh and Mona), a life of self-imposed exile and utopian desire (Raqib Shaw), re-purposing of utensils of daily use into an object of meditation (Subodh Gupta) and a relentless search for the resurrection of our lost rhythms with Nature (Jayashree Chakravarty). Ranbir Kaleka’s Not Anonymous Waking to the Obscure Fear of a New Dawn (2017-2018), a single channel video projected on six planes defies a single point of reference while powerfully highlighting an existential crisis in an increasingly hostile world while his Long Sleep of a Storyteller (2012-2022) evokes a surrealist dystopia, reflecting an experiential image of the artists’ inner world. Sonia Khurana’s double channel video Somnambulist's Song (2008) is a rumination on the opposing experiences of sound and silence. Anish Kapoor’s huge mysterious disk titled Mirror (Red no.2 mix to Black Mist) (2019) confounds the idea of space and object, and the experience of the aural and the ocular.

Rashid Rana’s installation Desperately Seeking Paradise (2010-2011) disrupts the idea of a fixed reality through the creation of an optical illusion, a maze out of a familiar city skyline image. Arun Dev’s meticulously painted enigmatic doorways and psychedelic architecture takes us to maybe mysterious spaces, perhaps, of an alternate world. Gauri Gill’s evocative Re- memory (2003-ongoing), a series of 54 black-and-white photographs capture unregistered presences, and overlooked details of mundane and urban spaces, delicately outlining a poetics of space. Conversing with Gauri’s black and white photographs, Dhruv Malhotra’s colour pigment print series Sleepers, After Dark Trilogy (2007-2013) draws our attention to the silent underbelly of the city at night devoid of its clamouring noise, traffic, people and the surrounding chaos. It draws our attention to poignant images of sleepers/ sleeping figures on benches in public spaces such as parks, under the flyover, deserted after-party places and monuments. Nikhil Chopra’s Broken White (2010) presents the afterlife of his performance in Paris in 2010 as inscribed in the memory-site constructed with its accessories, drawings, photographs within the exhibition space, thus adding another layer to the performance Martha Fiennes’ extraordinary film Yugen (2018), a combined effort of the artist’s creativity
working in sync with the computer coder’s actions, creates constantly evolving labyrinths which takes viewers through the surreality of time and space to a world that can only be experienced in the realm of art.

Sheba Chhachhi’s multi-part installation Winged Pilgrims: A Chronicle from Asia (2006-2007) is a work that has evolved out of years of research. It transmutes itself into an assembly of visual images that slowly ushers in the viewer to a quiet ambience facilitating meditation on pressing worldly issues such as migration, displacement, impact of globalisation and the unresolved friction between tradition and modernity. Nataraj Sharma’s massive works tread on similar themes as he draws the viewers’ attention to the rapidly changing urban context of progress-driven stripping and denudation of landscape. Also, deploying his favoured strategy of the grid and repetition he prompts an exploration into the ways in which perceptions are formed vis-à-vis the visible mode. Rohini Devasher’s Terrasphere (2015), demand steady mindfulness to observe subtle changes occurring in the image-field or the cosmos of the earth.

Jayashree Chakravarty ‘s hand-made suspended form titled Nest (2022-2023), created out of organic material such as jute rope, coconut fibre, dried leaves, seeds and stained with coffee and tea resonates with the interiors of the body or a mind maze, echoing simultaneously the instinctive play of line and mass in nature.
There are works that allude to spectres and apparitions, to human mortality and pain. Neha Choksi’s Iceboat (2012) is a performative and philosophical reflection on the condition of precarity of existence. While, ruminations on the ritual aspects of death and transitional states of being is presented by Sudarshan Shetty in his video work Juggler (2012). Bikash Bhattacharya’s motif of the ‘doll’ standing, hanging or abandoned in the deserted city of Calcutta, in the wake of war and violence takes us into an eerie setting of a street or a dead- end wall. Marina Abramović’s film Seven Deaths of Maria Callas (2020-2021) a performative adaptation of iconic operatic characters played by Maria Callas such as Desdemona from Shakespeare’s Othello or Georges Bizet’s Carmen, is a moving rendition on the interwoven fate of women. Using her body as the medium of her art and expression, Abramović is recognised not only for the intensity of her performance-based practice, but also for her grit and risk-taking approach while testing the limits of her mind and body to transcend fear and mortality.

Participating artists
Anish Kapoor| Arun Dev |Bikash Bhattachariee | Dayanita Singh | Dhruv Malhotra | Gauri Gill | GR Iranna | Harshit Agrawal | Jayashree Chakravarty | Marina Abramović | Martha Fiennes | Nataraj Sharma | Neha Choksi | Nikhil Chopra | Pooja Iranna | Ranbir Kaleka | Raqib Shaw | Rashid Rana | Rohini Devasher | Sheba Chhachhi | Shezad Dawood |Sonia Khurana | Subodh Gupta | Sudarshan ShettyVisiting the exhibition

Open to public: From 25 January 2024
Venue: KNMA, Noida
Timing: 10:30 A.M - 6:30 P.M
The museum is closed on Monday and all public holidays
Admission to exhibitions is free