Historica - Republican Aesthetics / The Plough and other stars

IMMA has recently launched its autumn programme with two new exhibitions selected by two guest curators: Indian curator Sumesh Sharma (Clark House Initiative, Bombay) and Irish curator Kate Strain (Grazer Kunstverein). Both have been invited by IMMA to present new projects at the Museum that reflect their individual curatorial practices and in doing so bring new curatorial perspectives into IMMA’s programme. 

Sumesh Sharma presents Historica - Republican Aesthetics, an exhibition that deals with the idea of the state and nation building as a context for art making. It explores the relationships that people hold with identity and the nation, defined by other factors such as race, religion, tradition, cuisine, geography and history that together define culture. How do India and Ireland, both post-colonial societies that won independence from Britain, today celebrate many years of independence but still grapple with nationalism and false pride? How do artists define republicanism and nationalism? What are the aesthetics of a modern secular state?

Featured artists include: Judy Blum Reddy, Krishna Reddy, Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Somnath Mukherjee, Nikhil Raunak, Poonam Jain, Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, Yogesh Barve, Sachin Bonde, Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty, Nadine el Khoury, Aurélien Froment, Aurélien Mole, Caecilia Tripp, Kemi Bassene, Naresh Kumar, Saviya Lopes, Seamus Nolan, and Amol K Patil

In a separate space Kate Strain presents The Plough and other stars. This exhibition proposes some alternatives to death—space travel, time travel, reincarnation. Presenting newly commissioned work by Richard John Jones, a celestial wall collage by Riccardo Arena, and video by Yazan Khalili, the exhibition is a meditation on the poetics of immortality. Taking its title from a well-know Sean O'Casey play, the show is both a display of artworks for people to come and visit, and a rehearsal space for the development of a new theatrical production, in collaboration with The Centre For Dying On Stage and Cow House Studios. Throughout the exhibition a series of events and performances unfold, including a new iteration of Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili's lecture performance Love Letter to Mars.

Admission to both exhibitions is free of charge and there is a series of free talks and curator's tours taking place during the year—see www.imma.ie for more details.

About the curators

Sumesh Sharma co-founded the Clark House Initiative, Bombay in 2010 where he is presently the curator as well as being the invited curator to the biennale of African contemporary art - Dak'Art 2016, Senegal. His practice deals with alternate histories that are informed by the Black Arts movement, socio-economics, immigration in the francophone and vernacular equalities of modernism.

Kate Strain is the Artistic Director of the Grazer Kunstverein. Based between Austria and Dublin, ongoing curatorial projects include The Centre For Dying On Stage; Department of Ultimology; and RGKSKSRG. Strain has worked at Cow House Studios, Wexford; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; the National College of Art and Design, Dublin; and on collaborative projects in Turin, Amsterdam and St. Louis, Missouri.