Khoj-Tate in landmark collaboration

Khoj, the New Delhi-based experimental art studio, is going places. Come July 12 and the Tate Modern in London, Britain’s and perhaps the world’s foremost art gallery, will open a group exhibition that has been conceptualised as a “curatorial collaboration” with Khoj. ‘Word. Sound. Power.’ was put together jointly by Khoj’s resident curator Asmita Rangari, aka Andi, and the Tate’s Loren Hansi Momudu. The exhibition will be on show at the Project Space gallery until November, and then travel to Delhi in January 2014.

The exhibition is a landmark in many ways. For, while the “east is east and west is west” mindset is largely a thing of the past, creative collaborations, at least at the level of organisations and not individual artists, are few and far between. More so since Khoj is not a government body like the NGMA, but a private art organisation that is non-commercial and led by artists .   

‘Word. Sound. Power.’ will feature eight artists, some emerging and some established, and four of them from India. The latter include Mithu Sen, winner of the Skoda Prize for Contemporary Indian Art in 2010; Amar Kanwar, documentary filmmaker and video artist whose works are at the Guggenheim; and Pallavi Paul, a young JNU student who has contributed two videos.

“The idea was to focus on the poetics and politics of language, and its relations with power,” explains Andi whose interactions with her curator-partner was limited to two weeks in September last when she visited London, another two weeks when Momudu was in Delhi, and “endless Skype chats”. Much of the interacting with artists and commissioning, too, was done over video chat.

In keeping with the avant garde vein of the show, most works will be videos and performances. For instance, Mithu Sen will be reading out a new work called ‘I am a Poet 2013’ on the first five days of the show.

In a similar vein is Jordanian artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s ‘The Whole Truth’, which deals with the politics of voice and speech, specifically the software used to identify and deny asylum to Somalian refugees in some European countries.

Clearly, politically most of the art-works at the Tate will be edgy, with Amar Kanwar showing ‘A Night of Prophecy 2002’ — recordings of songs of activists from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, and Kashmir. In a similar vein is Saccha, a 2001 film featuring Padmashri awardee Dalit poet Narayan Surve.