Lounge
2024: How artists from the subcontinent spread their wings across the globe
Summary
This was the year when artists, especially women practitioners at different stages of their careers, saw major recognitions, significant shows and museum acquisitions come their way
Earlier this year, Delhi-based Rohini Devasher became the first Indian to be recognised by Deutsche Bank as their ‘Artist of the Year’ for 2024. This led to her first major monographic exhibition in Europe, ‘Borrowed Light’, which opened in Berlin at the PalaisPopulaire in September and will be on display till early March. In her research-intensive practice, she “highlights her long-standing engagement with astronomy, where light plays a pivotal role. For Devasher, the key to exploring new cosmologies between the human and the non-human lies in examining the interplay between place, observer, and observation," states the exhibition note.
In another significant achievement, the seventh edition of the Jameel Prize for contemporary art and design went to Bengali artist Ohida Khandakar for her film and installation Dream Your Museum (2023). The work is currently being exhibited at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum, London till mid-March.
Year-on-year, artists from the subcontinent have been recognised by international art foundations and museums for their practices. 2024 saw this being taken a notch further, especially for women artists, at different stages of their careers, who won laurels for the nuanced perspective and approach that they brought to their work.
For instance, Mumbai-based Prajakta Potnis, known for her interdisciplinary practice—spanning photography, painting, sculpture and installation—themed around transgression of boundaries and the passage of time, became the second recipient of the Loewe Foundation/ Studio Voltaire Award in July. “The award was started in 2021 with the intention of highlighting ‘creative thinking and individuality within contemporary art practice’ while also working ‘to increase and strengthen equitable representation and access, and amplify artistic voices across class, race, gender, sexuality and disability’," states a piece in Art News about the award.
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Sree Goswami, whose gallery Project 88 represents Devasher, Khandakar and Potnis shared why this recognition is critical. “For our mid-career artists, these are definitive affirmations. It also allows them to develop their thought-provoking practice independently in a hyper-commercialised art world, where the space for critical thinking is constantly shrinking," she says.
Major works by Varunika Saraf—stemming from her engagement with mythologies and histories, using handcrafted pigments and wasli paper, to reflect on contemporary realities of social injustice and marginalisation—were displayed at the Queensland Art Gallery as part of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) in Australia. The eleventh edition of the event continued its effort to showcase artistic expression from Australia, Asia and the Pacific, especially of those practitioners not previously shown extensively in the country. Alongside her works, It Rained This Winter and The Sky Set Ablaze, one could also see recent series by Rithika Merchant. Terraformation from 2022-23 showed her signature hybrid creatures leaving the planet and ‘terraforming’ their new homes. “Drawing on scientific, fictitious and mythological ideas, each work in the series acts as a proposition for sustaining life in a new world," states the exhibition note.
Besides women artists, multidisciplinary practitioners, who look at marginalised histories, were also recognised. Sajan Mani, who lives and works between Kochi and Berlin, was one of the four artists to be awarded the Villa Romana Prize—the oldest German art prize—, which also includes a 10-month residency in Florence in 2025. In February, Mani, who comes from a family of rubber planters and uses his body as a vigorous means of Dalit resistance, was part of an exhibition series in Berlin, which spotlighted artistic explorations into their genealogies and ritual practices.
The year was also bountiful in terms of representation at major exhibitions. For instance, Amol K. Patil, a conceptual and performance artist, who investigates the sound, social structures and architecture of Mumbai’s chawls, showed his site-specific installation, Who is Invited in the City, at the 15th Gwangju Biennale—a global stage for dialogue around contemporary art.
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Sohrab Hura’s first survey in the US is currently on at MoMA PS1 in New York, where he is exhibiting more than 50 of his works. Soumya Shankar Bose’s show Braiding Dusk and Dawn which opened in May at the Delfina Foundation in London both factually examined and fabulated about his mother’s disappearance as a child and the ensuing family trauma during politically turbulent period in West Bengal. Barbican Centre in London hosted a noteworthy group show, Imaginary Institution of India: Art (1975-1998), featuring works of senior contemporary artists such as Gulammohammed and Nilima Sheikh, Nalini Malani, Sudhir Patwardhan, Sunil Gupta, and more. During the Venice Biennale, one witnessed Cosmic Garden, a two-person show featuring works by senior artists Manu and Madhvi Parekh, which also saw their practice translated to hand-embroidered works by Mumbai-based Chanakya School of Craft.
This year saw multiple international museum acquisitions as well. For instance, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi acquired Afrah Shafiq’s video game installation Nobody Knows for Certain (2023) and Berlin-based Afghan artist Aziz Hazara’s Rehearsal (2020). MoMA, New York picked up Bombay Tilts Down (2022), CAMP’s seven channel environment with sound, which had been shown in the previous edition of the Kochi Biennale, and a work by the late Vivan Sundaram. The Kunstmuseum Basel acquired Kunstfloor (2022), a work by Vishwa Shroff and included it in their recent exhibition From Holbein to Trockel.
M+, Hong Kong’s premier museum of contemporary art picked up TIMELAPSE: Of saturation, summer houses and second homes (2022) a mixed media work in paper and a digital video by Sameer Kulavoor, and Kinship (Familial and Found), a textile-based work by Bhasha Chakrabarti at the Art Basel fair in Hong Kong. Dubai-based Ishara Foundation which is focused on South Asian Art acquired works by Varunika Saraf, Gigi Scaria and Mithu Sen this year.
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Based on the initial signs, the coming year promises to be as exciting. Well-known curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, when asked by Artnet about the one artist he is looking out for in 2025, singled out Arpita Singh. He mentioned that The Serpentine Galleries, his institution, is considering her for their Spring exhibition. Ishara Foundation in Dubai is also planning Shilpa Gupta’s first monographic exhibition in West Asia this January.
Over the last decade, international curators have focused more on African and Latin American art when it comes to emerging economies. However, with greater access to residencies, art fairs and major museum exhibitions leading to robust recognition – voices of many individual Indian artists are now resonating louder across the globe.
Anindo Sen is an independent art writer.
