‘Printmaking from India is gaining attention and is an exciting area to explore’: Carol Huh of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

Yogini, from the series, Native Women of South India: Manners
and Customs; Photograph by N. Pushpamala (2000-2004); Chromogenic print on metallic paper
Credit: Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution

For Untitled (Black) and Untitled (Red), both made in 2002, Kallat extracts the images of anonymous people on Mumbai streets. He then makes them explode by distorting them to depict the “pressures and contradictions of life in the city”. In Jyoti Bhatt’s Man and Machine (1975), the two titular entities become one to create a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, eerily preemptive of the AI evolution that we see today.

Carol Huh, NMAA Associate Curator of Contemporary Asian Art, in an email interview, talks about how contemporary Indian artists use photography and printmaking to redefine notions of identity and agency. Excerpts:

How did the idea of having an exhibition of prints and photographs by Indian artists at the Smithsonian come about?

For over two decades, we have been engaged with photography from India; NMAA Archives and collections include works dating from the mid-19th century to the present, and one of the largest museum holdings of works by Raghubir Singh (1942–1999). In recent years, gifts from the Umesh and Sunanda Gaur Collection have enhanced significantly the number of Indian artists represented at the NMAA, as well as introduced to the museum’s holdings for the first time print works by Indian artists who have made important contributions to the field. The first exhibition drawing from the Gaur Collection, titled Unstill Waters (2022) featured photography, video and a few etchings. Body Transformed builds on that project by juxtaposing photographic works and a wider array of print techniques.

The exhibition features works by Indian artists across generations, from Jyoti Bhatt to Jitish Kallat. What was it about the sensibility of Indian art that the exhibition was looking to showcase?

The focus was rather on representations of the human form that are informed by South Asian social, cultural and aesthetic contexts.

Both photography and printmaking are often not considered mainstream visual art practices. What was the intention behind turning the spotlight on these mediums?

Photography as an artistic practice, and the contributions of South Asian artists, is well recognised generally, and at the NMAA in particular. Japanese prints are also a strength of the collections and curatorial expertise at NMAA. As such, printmaking from or related to India, which is beginning to gain attention, seemed like a fitting and exciting area to continue exploring.

In this show, as the title suggests, the human body goes from being a subject to becoming a medium of cultural and societal change. Why do you think that the body assumes such significance for these artists?

Social, political and technological developments of the twentieth century have had a profound impact on artistic approaches to the body as medium and subject. For each of the artists featured in this exhibition, the human form and the expressive power of photography and print media offer ways to examine the place of the individual in society. Works by Pushpamala N and Clare Arni, Vivek Vilasini, Ram Rahman and Naveen Kishore focus on the performing body to confront notions of social and cultural identity through photography, a medium that has played a complicated role in India since the nineteenth century. Jitish Kallat and Rashid Rana manipulate photographic images to simultaneously assert and dissolve the figure in jarring compositions that hover between reflections on the public being and the disquiet of the inner self. Master print artists Krishna Reddy, Jyoti Bhatt and Chitra Ganesh experiment with provocatively carved lines and vivid colors unique to printmaking. Fragmenting, morphing and multiplying the figure, these artists incorporate various processes to explore representations of power, place and sexuality in today’s world.

Performing the Goddess
Photograph by Navin Kishore (1999); Inkjet print on ultra smooth fine art paper
Credit: Navin Kishore / National Museum of Asian Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Drs. Umesh and Sunanda Gaur

The quotidian and the anonymous seem to be recurrent themes in this exhibition. What was the curatorial thought process while selecting the works?

I was interested in showing different approaches to bodily imagery through particular mediums. As for curatorial approach, a number of factors shape an exhibition, including formal and conceptual relationships as one moves through the galleries, from one work to the next.

Many works, including the ones by Naveen Kishore and Pushpamala N, look at the physical body vis a vis the metaphysical identity. For a viewer, both seem to appear at odds with one another. Your comments.

In the examples by Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni, popularized images of the Indian woman are restaged using elaborate costuming, staging and painted backdrops in what Pushpamala N. calls “photo-performances”. Yet elements of the compositions make apparent the disjunction between her photographed body and the artificially painted surroundings, and thus shift the viewer’s attention from the subject to the performance in front of the camera. Altogether, these subtle disruptions subvert archetypes of the Indian woman and highlight the constructed nature of such representations. For Navin Kishore, I don’t see the identities as being at odds. His work is an extended portrait that draws the viewer into an intimate experience of a profound transformation, and the performative dimension of identity.