Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in collaboration with the Sharjah Art Foundation open a new exhibition titled Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular from February 8 to April 30 at KNMA, Saket. The exhibition presents the works of around 50 artists from different parts of the world.

The exhibition is curated by lftikhar Dadi, artist; John H Burris, professor at Cornell University; and Roobina Karode, director and chief curator of KNMA. Initiated and displayed first at the Sharjah Art Foundation, the exhibition is now presented at KNMA with additional works and parallel projects located in both the Saket and Noida spaces of the museum.

Weaving an intergenerational dialogue through more than 100 artworks by artists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the diaspora, it is one of the first major exhibitions to provide a substantial representation of modern and contemporary art from South Asia inflected through the vibrant prism of popular culture.

Spanning works mainly from the mid-twentieth century to the present, the exhibition showcases artists addressing complex issues facing the self and society and the politics of the everyday through irony, play and humour.

The exhibition spotlights artists who intervene in the aesthetics of print, and advertising, cinematic and digital media, comic books alongside those engaging with devotional and traditional practices, crafts and folk culture. It also presents artists addressing modes of local capitalism, from large-scale industries to vernacular bazaars, co-opting objects or castaways of mass production in conjunction with those commenting on identity, politics and borders.

Expanding as well as subverting the conventional canons of Pop Art, understood primarily in the Western context as art that addresses consumer culture and mass media, the exhibition foregrounds multiple layers of artistic practices.

Alluding to the fluid spirit and shifting definition of the Pop, the exhibition does not intend to be a complete account, but presents many parallel and intersecting routes coalescing from different vantage points.

When: February 8 – April 30

Where: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket