Now Showing in Tokyo

Titled Anna — Silent Voices,by Snehasish Maity,this work is among the 11 currently on display at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo,as part of an exhibition called “Urban Narratives”. Curated by art historian and critic Nanak Ganguly,the exhibition showcases the work of four artists presently working in Kolkata — Sekhar Roy,Adip Dutta,Snehasish Maity and Piyali Sadhukhan.

Through these 11 contemporary works — eight of which were commissioned for the show — the exhibition explores questions of identity and socio-political conditioning in contemporary art in the country today. “The artists are represented here through works that include multimedia installations and canvases which are responses to some pressing cultural and historical needs of the time we live in,” says Ganguly.

Anna — Silent Voices,for instance,is a comment on how these apparent activists campaigning against various issues are made the focus of discussions by the media instead of the actual issue. “Sometimes,these people become heroes to society and then,what they are doing is pushed to the background and the man is given more importance,” says Maity.

Dutta’s large-scale untitled sculptural work,on the other hand,explores his interest in archaeology,architecture and such. At first glance,the work might appear to be a skeleton of some sort. What it is,however,is a hugely magnified version of a hair clip. “Our everyday is made up of numerous banal objects that have only functional and mundane applications,” he says. “An almost compulsive act of recognising their aesthetic appeal directs me to an intense exploration of the boundaries of the ‘banal’ and a constant attempt to propel them into the domain of the higher disciplines like archaeology,architecture,drawing and art-history.”

Roy’s rather magnificent installation Skyline aims to rediscover domestic/indigenous spaces,while Sadhukhan’s sketch,installation and animation talk about subjects such as female foeticide. Issues of violence are almost apparent in the latter’s startlingly graphic work depicting the bodies of women with what appear to be red growths on them.

Besides merely exploring the Indian contemporary art scene,the purpose of the exhibition,Ganguly says,was to establish a space where discussions on culture could be held. “My intention was to give birth to a site,which will provoke dialogue on our notion of culture,” he says.