A lecture by Ravi Agarwal, Discussant: Ashok Sukumaran
Ravi Agarwal has an interdisciplinary practice as an artist, photographer, environmental campaigner, writer and curator. His recent works are an inquiry about nature and its role in everyday social and political situations, especially the slow extinction of indigenous cultures and economies due to new standardising forces of globally linked capital. The talk will highlight the ideas which inform his practice as an artist and activist and his proposals for the future.
Ashok Sukumaran is an artist and the co-founder of CAMP and Pad.ma. His interests include distributed forms and contemporary infrastructures, and art as a risky and expressive engagement with things larger and stranger than "us".
The State of Nature in India lecture series aims to provide a multi-disciplinary platform in order to better understand complexities of anthropogenic processes - a term that depoliticises the current ecological crisis - and critique what it means through a focus on India.
Speakers:
Ravi Agarwal has an inter-disciplinary practice as an artist, photographer, environmental campaigner, writer and curator. His work explores key contemporary questions of ecology, society, and capital. It has been shown widely, including at the Yinchuan Biennial (2018), Kochi Biennial (2016), the Sharjah Biennial (2013), Documenta XI (2002), etc. He co-curated the Yamuna-Elbe project, an Indo German twin city public art and ecology project (2011), and Embrace our Rivers an Indo- European project in Chennai (2018). His work is in several private and public collections, and he has served on many art juries and committees.
Ravi is also the founder director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link which has pioneered work in waste and chemicals in India. He serves on policy and regulatory committees and Boards and writes extensively on sustainability issues and has co-edited several books. He was awarded the UN Special Recognition Award for Chemical Safety in 2008 and the Ashoka Fellowship for social entrepreneurship in 1997. His training has been in engineering and management.
Ashok Sukumaran is an artist based in Mumbai. He co-founded CAMP and Pad.ma in 2008. His interests include distributed forms and contemporary infrastructures, and art as a risky and expressive engagement with things larger and stranger than "us". His work both as CAMP and individually has been exhibited at
Sculpture Project Munster,
Documenta 13 and 14,
biennials of Sharjah, Shanghai, Gwangju, Kochi, Liverpool, Taipei, and recently at
the Tate Modern. Film works have been shown at the Flaherty seminar, Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Viennale, MAMI, London Film festival, and at CAMP's own rooftop cinema. As part of a hands-on interest in technologies of all kinds, he recently built with others a book-scanning platform, a community library (aarandaar.net), and is working on series of digital probes into Bombay/ Mumbai's archives, a five year project on roads, and an upcoming exhibition at the De Appel curatorial program in Amsterdam.
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