Collected Research at the Indian Museum, Kolkata - An Overview
The evening will bring forth some answers to questions like, What is bauhaus imaginista? What is the significance of Bauhaus in context to India and particularly to Bengal and the city of Kolkata? What is the uniqueness behind the specially designed and curated exhibition coming up at the Indian Museum? The concept behind presenting some of the noteworthy works of Gaganendranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore from the reserve collection of the Indian Museum as part of the exhibition? What is the significance of the upcoming exhibition in the context of the Santinikentan chapter?
The programme will be presented online through a conversation between Grant Watson and Sanchayan Ghosh, moderated by Anshuman Dasgupta. It will be live-streamed on the facebook pages of
Indian Museum and
Goethe-Institut Kolkata.
Speakers
© Royal College of Arts
Grant Watson is a renowned curator and writer based in London. With Marion von Osten he was the artistic director of bauhaus imaginista. His research exploring life practice and politics through interviews include How We Behave (ongoing) with If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam, shown at Nottingham Contemporary, the Showroom, London, State of Concept, Athens, Extra City, Antwerp and the Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Folded Life: Talking Textile Politics (online) with the Johann Jacobs Museum. Projects addressing transnationalism include Practice International Iniva, London, Iaspis, Sweden, Casco, Holland, and Tagore, Pedagogy and Contemporary Visual Cultures (2013 – 2014). His works also include extensive research into modern and contemporary Indian art resulting into innumerable exhibitions in various places around the world.
Watson has held curatorial positions at the Institute of International Visual Arts, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp and Project, Dublin. He has a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College, London, is a tutor at the Royal College of Art and was a recipient of the BAK Fellowship in 2019/20.
© Sanchayan Ghosh
Sanchayan Ghosh lives and works in Santiniketan and Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He is currently an Associate Professor, Department of Painting, Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. Sanchayan Ghosh has been practicing site-specific art as a workshop based collective community dialogue leading to numerous forms of public engagements over the last twenty years. His interest in process based collaborative making and sharing of art lead him to interact also with different performance forms from all over India. Moreover, through his regular engagement in pedagogy, he has explored art practice as a critical engagement of individual and collective conversation where he has collaborated and participated in different interdisciplinary encounters exploring institutional space as an interface of the private and the public. He has also worked in different kinds of self-organized initiatives in different parts of the world and explored transforming relationship of land, location, labour and practice. He has been awarded Charles Wallace Fellowship, UK in 2003-04 and worked on “Merge Down and Resist” with 3 generations of Asian migrants on framing of identities in Bristol. He has also participated in Kochi Muziris Biennale, Documenta14. Ghosh’s collaborative sound project ‘Short Wave’s Transit Tales’ was commissioned by Documenta14. This piece has been shown in three exhibitions in Basel in Switzerland, Berlin and Weimar in Germany. His selected solo exhibitions include Reversed Perspective: 3 Conjunctures, 2014 and Sisyphus Effect, together with Experimenter, Kolkata, 2010.
© bauhaus imaginista
Anshuman Das Gupta acquired his PhD from Goldsmiths, London University after his graduation in art history from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, and post-graduation in art history from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S University of Baroda, He has also attended the film appreciation course at FTII, Pune in 1993, and has been a research fellow at the M.S. University, Baroda from 1992 to 1997. Anshuman joined the Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan in 1997 as a lecturer in art History. His recent curatorial ventures include the Ramkinkar Baij Centenary exhibition and the Khoj International Artists’ exhibition. He was the chief curatorial researcher from India for the Bauhaus Imaginista exhibition. As a writer Anshuman has contributed many essays to journals like the ‘Lalit Kala Contemporary’, ‘The Marg Volumes’, ‘Nandan’ which is published by the Department of Art History, Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, more recently in the book titled ‘Santhal Family: Positions around an Indian Sculpture’, and in the Bauhaus Imaginista online/offline journal.
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