While India has participated previously in the Biennale, this is the first time that the country has had its own official Pavilion. Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode… was conceptualized and curated by Ranjit Hoskote and features the works of three artists, Gigi Scaria, Zarina Hashmim, and Praneet Soi and the work of collaborative team The Desire Machine Collective (Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya.) The exhibition explores the meaning of the cultural citizenship and what it means to India today, while emphasizing the cross-cultural approach of recent artistic production in diverse locations. The artists selected by Hoskote had to meet two qualifications. First, these artists must represent the diversity of India’s cultural history and the geographic diaspora of the Indian nation. And second, that none of the artists be previously involved in galleries and auctions prior to their involvement in this Biennale.
The analysis of Indian identity and the incorporation of Western idioms that Hoskote addresses is not a novel topic in contemporary Indian art. [1. Jeffery Wechsler and Umesh Gaur, eds. Indian Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collectors. (New Jersey: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, 2002): 17. ] With an uneven course of development compared to Western movements and the frequent incursion of other cultures, contemporary Indian art is characterized, and ultimately judged by it’s hybridity with Western culture. [2. Benno Tempel “Preface” Indian Contemporary (New York: Uitgeverij d’jong Hond): 12. ] This process has been accelerated by globalization and cross-culturalism as it causes cultural centers and their peripheral spaces to collapse. An essential understanding of contemporary Indian art is how it has created a new presence on the international scene. As a distinctive movement, it has become an inclusive forum both for artists based in India an for those who are part of the Indian diaspora. [3. Wechsler and Gaur, eds. India Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collectors, 19. ]
Most of the galleries that feature contemporary Indian art are located outside of New Delhi and Mumbai, the two leading artistic center in India. Rather they are located in Western Europe and along the east coast of the United States, creating a situation where the galleries are key promoters in this movement. This has led to an environment where the measure of success is based on sales rather than artistic achievement, indicating why Hoskote selected artists who have not been “valorized by the gallery system and auction-house circuit.” [4. http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibtion/first-time/india.html ]
The concepts and themes behind the individual works of art in India’s exhibit, while engaging, do not directly reference the notion of Indian national identity. It is the pavilion as a whole that comments on how the nation of India perceives its national identity. The title of the exhibition neatly summarizes and is able to capture in its brief phrase what national identity mans to Indians as it is expressed through the contemporary Indian art movement. Appropriately functioning as a type of propaganda for the movement, it answers the questions one might ask when reading the Pavilion’s title: who is agreeing (the international scene) and what is about to explode (contemporary Indian art.)
