INDIA/Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art

FotoFest announces the release of a new hardcover book. INDIA/Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art is published in conjunction with the FotoFest 2018 Biennial in Houston, Texas, March 10–April 22, 2018.

The book and corresponding Biennial exhibitions are an extensive presentation addressing issues in contemporary India, a dynamic and diverse nation of over one billion people. The book features over 300 four-color reproductions from established and emerging artists of Indian origin.

The INDIA book is a program of the FotoFest 2018 Biennial, in conjunction with FotoFest’s exhibitions, a two-day symposium, artist and curator talks, a film program, and a school curriculum for students developed by the FotoFest Literacy Through Photography learning program. Together, the programs engage a number of contemporary issues within India and the global Indian diaspora, including economic development, education, land use and environmental concerns, religion, gender and sexuality, caste and class, activism and conflict, racism, religion, nationalism, new technologies and development, human settlement, migration, and integration.

Images, statements, and biographies  for the participating artists are included, making it a substantial reference of early 21st Century photographic and new media work by artists of Indian origin. Artists featured in the INDIA book and the FotoFest 2018 Biennial exhibition include: Indu Antony (Bangalore, India); Pablo Bartholomew (Delhi, India); Atul Bhalla (Delhi, India); Mohini Chandra (Fiji/UK/Australia); Sheba Chhachhi (Ethiopia/Delhi, India); Serena Chopra (Delhi, India); Tenzing Dakpa (Delhi, India); Sarindar Dhaliwal (Canada/Mumbai, India); Anita Dube (Delhi, India); Gauri Gill (Delhi, India); Chandan Gomes (Delhi, India); Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai, India); Shivani Gupta (Goa, India); Vinit Gupta (Delhi, India); Apoorva Guptay (Mumbai, India); Abhishek Hazra (Bangalore, India); Sohrab Hura (Delhi, India); Manoj Kumar Jain (Delhi, India); Samar Singh Jodha (Dubai, UAE); Ranbir Kaleka (Delhi, India); Rashmi Kaleka (Delhi, India); Max Kandhola (Birmingham, UK); Roshini Kempadoo (UK/Guyana); Asif Khan (Delhi, India); Anita Khemka and Imran B. Kokiloo (Delhi, India); Sandip Kuriakose (Delhi, India); Dhruv Malhotra (Delhi, India); Arun Vijai Mathavan (Ahmedabad, India); Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (UK/USA); Uzma Mohsin (Delhi, India); Nandini Valli Muthiah (Chennai, India); Pushpamala N. (Bangalore, India); Dileep Prakash (Delhi, India); Ram Rahman (Delhi, India); Raqs Media Collective (Delhi, India); Anoop Ray (Delhi, India); Vicky Roy (Delhi, India); Vidisha Saini (Delhi, India); Hemant Sareen (Delhi, India); Gigi Scaria (Delhi, India); Mithu Sen (Delhi, India); Rishi Singhal (Gandhinagar, India); Leila Sujir (Montréal, Canada); Ishan Tankha (Delhi, India); Prince Varughese Thomas (Houston, USA); and Anusha Yadav (Mumbai, India).

Essays from respected South Asian art experts will also be included in the book. Zahid R. Chaudhary is a Princeton-based specialist in postcolonial studies, visual culture, and critical theory. His book, Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India, provides a historical and philosophical account of early photography in India, analyzing how aesthetic experiments in colonial photographic practice shed light on the changing nature of perception and notions of truth, memory, and embodiment.

Nada Raza is a Research Curator for the Tate Research Center: Asia, and a former Assistant Curator at Tate Modern. She is an expert in modern and contemporary art from South Asia and its diaspora. Ms. Raza is pursuing her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where her research is focused on contemporary artists’ projects generated around the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Sea.

Gayatri Sinha is a curator and art critic based in New Delhi. She initiated and directs Critical Collective, which since its inception in 2011, has collaborated closely with institutions in India and abroad to create exhibitions and seminars on Indian art. Based on the need  for concerted editing and preservation of writing on visual art in India, Critical Collective launched www.criticalcollective.in, an online repository for writing on contemporary art, art history, exhibitions, cinema, and lens-based art from India.

FotoFest Biennial Lead Curator Sunil Gupta is an artist, writer, activist, and curator with nearly four decades of creative production. He curated the 2010 exhibition Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at Whitechapel Gallery, London, a landmark exhibition featuring over 70 artists, that gave an inside view of how modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have been shaped through the lens of their photographers.

FotoFest Executive Director and 2018 Biennial Co-Curator Steven Evans invited Gupta to lead the curatorial team organizing the 2018 Biennial, citing his decades-long research into South Asian photography, which includes the Whitechapel exhibition and many others, books, and surveys of art professionals in India and abroad. Mr. Evans provides the introduction to the book.

The INDIA book is a continuation of a FotoFest initiative to produce books that provide a deeper insight into the themes of its Biennial central exhibitions. Published in collaboration with Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam since 2014, previous books have received recognition for their high quality and thorough research. The 2018 book will be available worldwide beginning in March.

Principal sponsorship of the INDIA/Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art book publication is provided by the Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation.