Artesign Year

In this last year, we've brought you glimpses of inspiring homes and galleries, the best design stores to check out and conversations with emerging and prominent artists, designers, architects and curators from across South Asia. We travelled from Mumbai to New Delhi for the India Art Fair and India Design Week, Bangladesh for the Dhaka Art Summit, Dubai for Art Dubai and Design Days, Lahore for this years Literature festival and even made some excursions to New York, Milan and Basel.
From studio visits and conversations with artists like Atul Dodiya, Sudharshan Shetty, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher and Sheela Gowda; scouting out young furniture designers; looking for the best antique shops and design boutiques; keeping up with the latest architectural projects and exhibitions in India and South Asia and even created an artistic intervention at Pali Village Café. It certainly has been a busy year and we're excited to see what this coming year brings.

When I started this column 12 months ago, I gathered a cross-section of young, interesting figures from the city's many different worlds of art and design; Shilpa Gupta, Elise Foster Vander Elst, Ayan Mukherjee, Sita Wadhwani and Shahid Datwala we spent an afternoon talking candidly about what was wrong, what was right and what was exciting in art, design and architecture in India and South Asia. On the occasion of the columns one year anniversary, I caught up with a few of them to see just how much things have changed.

Artist Shilpa Gupta, saw Mumbai's art world as too segregated from the vast majority of Mumbaikars. "If it were close to a mall, I'm sure people would go."
It seems like Shilpa got her wish. The Phoenix Market City shopping mall, which opened in Chennai in January was converted into an art lovers paradise. Vijay and Sunitha Choraria lead the initiative, bringing together a few international art experts and a long list of stunning works by contemporary artists.
She explains,'I feel the most interesting development has been activities around the in between spaces like Mumbai Art Room, Cona, Clark House which allow for experimentation and the embracing of public venues - be it the Pali Village Cafe project curated by you along with Project 88 at one hand and creation of Art C in Chennai and Sunaparanta in Goa, both initiated by passionate collectors. It's been amazing and heart-warming to see the art community rally around the upcoming Kochi Biennale and has been a wonderful to enjoy the fantastic lectures by Jnavpravha online!'

'There seem to have been a lot of incredibly exciting projects hosted in Delhi this past year, including - "INSERT", curated by Raqs Media Collective, Subodh Gupta's major exhibition at the NGMA New Delhi. Closer to home in Mumbai, several new organizations who opened towards the end of 2013 have certainly made their mark this year, which is really positive news for the art scene. The unique residency and exhibition space "What About Art" in Bandra has brought new visual arts energy into the suburb. Finally, one of my highlights of the year was the exhibition "Amrita Sher-Gil: The Passionate Quest" at the NGMA Mumbai. It was such a treat to see this remarkable collection of the works in the museum, which was really looking it's best.' Tells me Elise Foster Vander Elst, from Asia Art projects.

This past year has seen unprecedented progress in art and design and this coming year promises to be just as exciting and I'm particularly looking to the 2nd edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale curated by Jitish Kallat due to open this coming December,
India design week in New Delhi, India Design Forum in Mumbai and Otlo my co curated project opening this March.