e-catalogue

CATALOGUE ESSAY
Marta Jakimowicz
Marta Jakimowicz is an Art Historian and Independent Curator living and working in Bangalore, India.
CATALOGUE DESIGN
Samyukta Kanwar
PRINTING
Sudarsan Graphics Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
c Artists, Gallery Sumukha, Rob Dean Art
Essay Marta Jakimowicz
SUREKHA
AYISHA ABRAHAM
PUSHPAMALA N.
BARBARA ASH
ABIR KARMAKAR
K.T. SHIVA PRASAD
Y. JAYAMMA
ANTHONY ROCHE
PRINCESS PEA
CHINTAN UPADHYAY
ARCHANA HANDE
JASMEEN PATHEJA
Gallery Sumukha
Bangalore I Chennai, India
Rob Dean Art
London, UK
Marta Jakimowicz
Our environment seems to abound in all kinds of doll-like representations of people, from toys to schematic or
infantilised images in book illustrations, comic strips, animated films, computer games, advertising and graphic design,
through which we tend to perceive and handle relationships with others. The phenomenon is so commonplace that we
rarely question its character, role and origin. Since childhood we carry the notion of the doll as a human baby, although
in various circumstances it may partly assume different manifestations along with their emotive and referential content.
Why do we need this intermediary that persists, if embodied in various forms throughout history? The classic doll as
we know it presently, even if it has not always been so, is the image of a newborn into whose passivity we hesitantly
infuse qualities of living being. This image epitomises the mother’s instinctive, protective tenderness that can be
expressed simply, fully and freely because it is unopposed and uncomplicated by the completely dependent baby who
seems to react only by receiving attention. It is safe without acknowledging the real child’s awkwardness, pains, or
whimsies and saturated with the baby’s pleasure, comfort and affection that grow in response to being looked after and
nestled. Young girls and often boys internalise the mother’s feelings and actions by imitating her behaviour towards
their toys. It is easier to shower the baby-doll with gestures of loving care when it is an inactive object, yet we strive for
it to approximate life and endow it with symbolic or actual animation - movable limbs, soft skin, eyes that open and
close, making it cry and dressing it.
Acquiring domestic and social skills, children in an intimate osmosis with dolls, absorb their passivity and malleability.
This occurs at the cusp between the instinctual and the culturally induced, while patriarchal paradigms operate in
conservative situations as well as influence more liberal ones, small children, especially when female, become liable
to external moulding. Here enters a whole palimpsest of metamorphoses varied over time, place and character of
societies and persons bringing with it a complexity of largely contradictory yet also complementary traits that emerge
spontaneously in girls and are more or less invisibly imposed upon them creating an ambiguous dichotomy of
appearance and meaning that is appropriated by girls with enjoyment but strains them too. Ours is an era that
recognises and respects the innate nature of the child with its autonomy and individuality, as we, in particular artists,
cherish and preserve in us its innocence and the powerful freshness of its first discoveries. On the other hand, the
prevailing worship of youth contains both a positive and distorting or dangerous potential. The fulfilment of kindly love
may turn into surrogacy that compensates loneliness. The passive child-doll may also lend itself to psychotic grownup
revenge whose roots go back to the earliest deprivations and endured cruelties.
Its image mediates layered, confusing trajectories while adult qualities are superimposed on it and grownups
appropriate its spirit. The child’s autonomy has been evolving over the past few centuries. Earlier worlds, even though
admitting young anatomy in religious imageries, from the hieraticised child Ganesha to the infant Jesus icon, oscillated
between spontaneous indulgency in children and treating them as voiceless property or ignoring them which resulted
in their depiction as small adults. Accordingly, in archaic dolls the tactile softness of cloth bundles coexisted with
similarity to utilitarian objects or divine figurines. Since multiple strata of the past continue to be embedded in the ever
changing contemporariness, the image of the child and the doll manifests itself in endless combinations of naturalness
and artifice, of what is inherently wished and what is thrust by society and culture. Since traditionally girls were
perceived to be easier to shape, it is their doll images that display the richest as well as the most disturbing complexity.
As gender equations are democratising now towards a certain androgyny, boys and boy-dolls begin to participate in
these mutations. The possibility of affirming the child there has to deal with the possibility of it becoming used and
abused by mature purposes, sensibilities and idiosyncrasies, roles, desires and expectations.
So, a little girl and a girl-doll can embody the nicest, most natural joys and the human capacity for love. The playful
identification of children with popular heroes through wearing their costumes can contribute to healthy growth and
social awareness. A girl’s temptation to adopt attractive adult clothes and attributes can be enchanting and educative
both in urban and rural contexts, but patriarchal strictures restrain it and steer within gender divisions and hierarchies
to suit and reflect the needs of the male gaze and desire, the sexualised girl-child yielding almost without her own will
or against it. Sometimes symbolically deified, her status nonetheless is much abused in reality. Conversely, an adult
woman may be cajoled or impelled to look and behave like a child over whom the male possessor exercises his power.
The precautious interest in cosmetics and fashion is an innocent sign of budding sexuality, yet it lends itself to
manipulation in nymphet images, pornography and sexual toys. On the other hand, comparisons can be drawn here
with ancient statuary and folk idols of the great goddess who is simultaneously formidable regal and resembles a
voluptuous young woman. Presently, there is an ambiguous permeability amid dolls and toys, traditional and modern
puppets, film stars, celebrities and figures of glamour advertising, popular media characters, models and mannequins
that reflects both simple aspirations and societal cul de sacs, Barbie, long eroticised as such, reportedly divorcing Ken.
Thus, a hazy, precarious balance links the natural and the denatured, the spontaneously playful and the objectified, the
naive and the seductive, the vivacious and the morbid, the intrinsic and the distorted, the free and the subjugated.
Representations of children then hover on the verge of the real and the imagined, the innate and the altered or
mutant. The doll in which so much of human emotionality and expectancy is deposited tends to assume its own life and
volition becoming independent of those who created or fantasised it, but still carrying intensified human feelings,
intentions and fears. Adorned and caressed in tune with sympathetic magic, it induces love. Pierced with nails and
shredded, it transfers pain and destruction onto to the hated person. If old myths and new tales talk about dolls, statues
and androids that are more humane and ethical than people, folklore, literature and cinema know also sinister, violent
dolls, puppets or robots causing calamities to their owners. As an antidote, the goodness and innocence of the child,
the hope that it holds for adults, survives in grown-ups and the aged protecting warmth, fantasy, creativity and
excitement with living.
The twelve artists in this exhibition relish and play with as well as analyse and critique the phenomenon, supporting
some of its beautiful aspects, revealing the density of others, subverting or parodying those, sometimes transforming
them into weapons of defiance and protest. Echoing the layers within the subject, they mediate wonder, tenderness
and affirmation, gravity, light humour and sarcasm, exuberance and revulsion, pleasure and sadness, ironic, at times
conceptual, retorts and descriptive or narrative suggestiveness, natural and put-on behaviour. Reference to the actual
and the immediate comes with the recourse to strong elements of realistic rendering, photography, film and quotations
from stylised popular imagery. The direct and unadorned may bring unassuming, warm elements but also coarse, raw
ones. Allusions to classical, folk and contemporary iconography and objects may anchor in graceful qualities, in
twisted, shocking ones too. A dose of endearing or disquieting kitsch and commercial cliché surfaces along with the
phantasmagoria, contradictions, hypocrisies and conflicts inherent to it. Since many of the participants in slightly or
drastically different ways deal with a number of manifestations and issues associated with the theme, their works
together evoke the connectedness and the disjoint among its baffling and lucid traits, its richness and poverty,
potentiality and limitations that remain evident as well as suppressed in the real world, ever fluctuating between the
stability of ingrained paradigms and their simultaneous transformation towards things intuited but unpredictable.
The infant-like doll provides a vital means during a child’s emotive, learning period to express the affectionate
relationship between the mother or parents and their little one. The receptive and relatively passive behaviour of the
baby becomes then compared with the doll’s to be soon imprinted with qualities reflective of what grownups expect
from it. Increasingly, those qualities turn out to be quite adult and attractive enough to let their imposition be willingly
absorbed by the child. “She is a kid”, the apparently direct photograph by Surekha is able to capture the essence of this
osmosis as it manifests itself among the local community. The little girl in the print enjoys her importance, confidently
seated in a party chair, singled out against the sky. She has a baby-doll. However, rather than nursing or embracing it
she seems to be grasping it like a prized possession. Herself dressed in shiny, embroidered silk, she wears plenty of
traditional gold jewellery which almost transforms her into a bride and, in such projection, into an object of ownership,
whereas the plastic doll strikes a slightly weird cord with its precautious maturity, its white complexion and Western
clothes speaking of certain social pretences, which the girl has proudly, if unconsciously, assimilated, even though she
has indigenised the doll by putting jasmine in its blond hair and marking its forehead with vermillion. The video “I am a
kid, thank you” captures this social moulding with graceful lucidity. Again, the film objectively registers a frequent
middle-class primary school event during which small children wearing diverse costumes present themselves on the
stage to be appreciated and evaluated by families and teachers. The costumes that reflect conventional gender roles
range from chaste, frilly angels to ladies of western fashion for girls, with a repertoire of heroes, creatures of nature and
society, like Spiderman, bees or tribal men, for boys. While the characters come up one by one stating who they are
and saying ‘thank you’ to the microphone, one can simultaneously sense their playful, innocent excitement and a bit of
vanity in aspiring to turn into their heroes as well as the influence of adults who monitor the process which assumes the
semblance of a light ritual or a competitive game. Whereas these children transform into contemporary dolls of sorts,
the doll-child equation itself goes back to times immemorial. Surekha’s “Surveillance”, black earthen pot, whose
archetypal symbolism includes that of the head, has been opened by the camera-shot eyes of a girl imitating
movements from classical dance and those of a doll raising and lowering its eyes.
Surekha She is a kid, 2010, Digital print on archival paper, 75 x 110 cms, Ed 1/8, Image courtesy the artist
Surekha Kushi with her Barbie, 2010, Digital print on archival paper, 75 x 110 cms, Ed 1/8, Image courtesy the artist
Surekha I am a kid, thank you, 2010, Video still, Ed 1/8, Image courtesy the artist
Surekha Surveillance, 2010, Video sculpture, Ed 1/8, Image courtesy the artist
The small dark skinned girl of today attired in her traditional finery and holding a white doll has a long historical
background behind her, one that was once embedded in the relationship between ambitious upper strata, but not only
those, of the country and its colonial rulers. Certain cultural and aspiration patterns that evolved then are still surviving,
particularly in the high value afforded to light complexion in women, in fact, an obsession with fairness. In “The Doll”
Ayisha Abraham looks at the phenomenon at the same time from the intimate perspective of her own family and
through a distanced, analytical angle of questioning. The centre and the starting point of her work is an early 20th
century photograph sourced from an ancestral album. Her attention is drawn to the small girl in a dainty western dress
and to the porcelain doll of British provenance seated on her knees. The dusky child is quite endearing
and unassuming even in her formal pose for the camera; and the artist seems to sympathise, perhaps identify, with her.
This focus allows her to almost step into the picture by using the computer technology as a means to visually convey her
tenderness and her understanding. Bringing the girl’s full portrait to the middle of the frame, she crops up the surrounding
figures in such a way that only significant elements remain to indicate the hidden core of the situation. There emerges a
signage of the social structure in which patriarchal gender roles and positions of hierarchy merge traits belonging to the
indigenous origin with those cultivated by the British whose appearance, mannerisms and faith used to be adopted by
some in order to keep or enhance their standing. Thus, the girl’s doll wears a feminine dress, whereas her younger
brother’s doll sports a shirt and trousers. The fragmentary sari of the mother who can be seen lower on reveals an elegant
shoe, but the father’s perfectly ironed, stern suit dominates the scene from above, his authoritative index finger looming
over the woman. The picture repeats thrice in a sequence of faded, bluish to green sepia that ends in comparatively later
tonalities with more black and white, so suggesting the passage of time and memory along a continuance of things within
their apparent changes. Despite the fine fabrics and poised gestures one might wonder how comfortable those people
were in their borrowed, aristocratic clothes. The naïve plaster dolls multiplying old-fashioned baby-ladies in frocks and
suited baby-men have been cast from the moulds that until recently were available in the marketplace. The history’s
shadow carries its propensity for affecting people even on the modest plane.
Ayisha Abraham The doll, 1993, Computer manipulated photographic print, 50 x 40 cms each, Ed 1/3 each, Images courtesy the artist
Ayisha Abraham The doll, 1995-99, Plaster of Paris, Variable, Image courtesy the artist
In a more or less instinctive manner, the doll-girl look becomes obligatory for the young woman in male-oriented
traditions where her beauty and opulent clothes display the splendour and might of her master and owner.
Pushpamala N., too, with empathy and conceptual mischief identifies with the lady-possession in order to undermine
its hold through her personal entry into the image as an involved participant and remote, aware critic. Her performance
photographs “The Qajar Woman”, part of her on-going project of travelogue photography, have her attired in the
embroidered finery of early 20th century female royalty from Iran’s Qajar dynasty. The dense floral fabric designs and
the pure whiteness of the tight head scarf almost entirely cover her body restricting it, their sumptuous intricacy
echoing the painted backdrop with architectural arches entwined by blossoming creepers against a naively brushed
sky, while the whole evokes an enclosed world deprived of contact with the outside. Symmetry and flatness
accentuate its artificiality, while the muted sepia of the rounded rectangles, along with the camera perspective
responding to the arches and cast shadows, draw one’s eye into the space of the past. Its autonomy, yet, becomes
disturbed by the innate assertiveness of the regal figure and the straight, daring gaze of the artist who has taken her
place. Seriousness mingles with humour, as her frozen features and the Persian make-up do not prevent the spectator
from noticing that she is somewhat too tall for the costume. The witty split then lets in the subversion of Pushpamala’s
gesture of feminist solidarity over faraway lands and history, especially that the shots taken in the studio of the Iranian
photographer Shadi Gharidian deliberately recreate Gharidian’s own performance prints in which she puts on the
same clothes and assumes similar stances. The three formal, Western poses, on the other hand, allude to
colonial-time Occidental conventions of ethnographic cataloguing of human types, the knowledge about them affording
power over the same. The consciousness of this historical heritage becomes so shared by the artists of both regions,
while reminding indirectly that exotic people used to be, and sometimes still are, represented in the shape of dolls with
their characteristic costumes. On a note more sarcastic than funny, in the video loop “Indian Lady”, the artist is dancing
as a coy, blissfully cute housewife-doll wearing rich, traditional silks and synthetic flowers in her bun. Sweet, docile and
smiling, a little infantile at that, she comes through as awkward as the charmingly crude cityscape behind her which
was sourced from a bazaar photo-studio painter, the glistening nocturnal high-rises furthering the impact of the
antiquated social mores she is fitted into.
Pushpamala N Indian lady, Video loop, colour, silent, 1997 Perth, Australia, Ed: 1/3, Image courtesy the artist
Pushpamala N, Shadi Ghadirian Studio, Tehran – Photographed by Shadi as Qajar Woman (Standing)
From The Series Exotic Views, Archival inkjet print, Harman Warmtone paper 76.2 X 50.8 cm, Ed: 3/6, 2009, Image courtesy the artist
Pushpamala N, Shadi Ghadirian Studio, Tehran – Photographed by Shadi as Qajar Woman (Sitting, Front view)
From The Series Exotic Views, Archival inkjet print, Harman Warmtone paper 76.2 X 50.8 cm, Ed: 3/6, 2009, Image courtesy the artist
Pushpamala N, Shadi Ghadirian Studio, Tehran – Photographed by Shadi as Qajar Woman (Sitting, Side view)
From The Series Exotic Views, Archival inkjet print, Harman Warmtone paper 76.2 X 50.8 cm, Ed: 3/6, 2009, Image courtesy the artist
The ambivalence between maturity and girlishness in the paragon of a desirable woman which dolls indeed augur,
embody and augment may be partly natural but it lends itself to the male and societal wish, to its overt rules and stated
values as well as secret passions and hypocrisies. Of course, little girls want to grow up quickly and soon enough
instinctively discover put-on the stratagems of cuteness and endearment that adults expect and reward for. On the other
hand, patriarchal environments mould them as examples of innocent propriety, gentility and obedience whose simple
grace will not let baser drives dormant underneath surface easily. In her work Barbara Ash has been tracing the
changes as well as the enduring aspects in the ideal of youthful beauty. As an Englishwoman who spends much of her
time in India, she adopts an image of the little female whose contemporary doll-like appearance has incorporated
evident as well as concealed qualities from the poses and atmosphere of Victorian studio photographs that portray
young girls along with home paraphernalia. The sculptural “Big Odd Doll”, poised but not comfortable, stands upright
somewhat angular in her sailor-suit frock complete with a pink ribbon, like a gently ironic, towering symbol of lovely
girlishness supported on classic pillar bases instead of legs. Modest, pure and submissive, her face has immense, blue
eyes expressive of the child’s naïve, trusting fascination with what is about to come. Her features are brushed clearly,
quite like in a period porcelain toy. The plump cheeks, though, hesitate between the smooth hardness of a fibre-glass
baby and the riper, emerging fullness of live skin. Her filigree companion, the “Frilly Doll” is an intimate, delightfully
homely variant of the little girl. All misty, pastel pink and white, she is dressed in an angelic white frock with intricate,
translucent laces, decent shiny booties and a string of beads. The pale, shaded hues on the large face recall the
sentimentality of hand-tinted Victorian camera shots, while the abundance of motifs from old-fashioned doilies brings in
nostalgia for refined table etiquette and slowly celebrated domesticity. It is only after a while that the spectator begins
to feel awkward noticing the girl’s prematurely ample, if not defined, chest and the patterns on the dress whose thick,
organic textures suggest the soft flesh of a vagina. One’s indulgency in the amazing innocence of the over-size baby in
“All that Glitters” may stumble on the slightly too sweet lips that seem to be readying for a kiss, and be embarrassed by
the fully developed breasts, the chained rose in the girl’s palm emblematic of both prettiness and entrapment.
Barbara Ash Big odd doll, 2010, Fibreglass, acrylic paint, paper doilies, 191 x 88 x 50 cms, unique
Image courtesy the artist
Barbara Ash Frilly doll, 2010, Fibreglass, acrylic paint, paper doilies, 110 x 45 x 36 cms, unique
Image courtesy the artist
Barbara Ash All that glitters III, 2010, Fibreglass, acrylic paint, metal chain, 71 x 37 x 51 cms
Edition off 5, Image courtesy the artist
Barbara Ash has been awarded the Artist’s Grant by the The Arts Council of England, towards the Dolls project.
What dolls of peaceful childhood mean to us can be multifarious enough without a shady underbelly. The emotional and
physical security established then, reflected in unequivocal values and heroes provides us with an anchor when adult
experience contradicts and distorts our hopes, leaving us with disappointment and longing for a return to the fair
beginning whose openness and trust promised fairyland in reality. Becoming a father recently has motivated Abir
Karmakar to recall his own childhood in sync and in confrontation with the broader and immediate world now. The
painter bridges and merges the nuanced precision of probing by the camera and the sensual expressiveness of classic
realism to unearth from the actual multifaceted layers of sensations and associations. A product of the disjointed yet
fusing globalised, urban contemporariness, he attunes himself to the identities and condition of others, especially
women and verge genders; which, with a degree of appropriation and distance, helps him understand them from within.
His “Doll House” is the bedroom of a young, perhaps teenage, girl, still immersed in the soothing warmth of eiderdowns
with magical suns and moons amid a profusion of soft, furry Teddy bears with whom she shares her tiered bed. Around
accessories of growing up, be it a pink computer or a cell-phone, lipstick or Valentine hearts, the cuddly toys along with
the clothes strewn around acquire erotic undertones, whilst the colourful, deflated balloon under the desk uncannily
resembles a used condom. The girl maybe grew up and married someone quite like herself to have a “Happy Family”
in tune with what she and her husband remember from their early days, whether it centred round a doll-house with
figurines of idyllic domesticity or an array of comic book champions. Whereas the room with its cosy furniture and
fabrics seems to combine both life stages, the young couple are dissonant hybrids.Their innocent, naked child-bodies
are supplanted by ill-fitting adult heads, beautiful but somewhat remniscent of the synthetic gloss in advertising or
mannequins, as the photographic fanning out of the scene emphasises the divergence of their expectations. Their
hopes clash all the more for having been imperceptibly induced in reality by the omnipresent new perfect look
proclaimed by westernised commercial imagery with airbrushed camera effects vying with fashion dummies. Hence, in
“Boyfriends” the traditional baby doll as the precursor of the ultimate male is envisaged in terms of a hardly humanised,
shop mannequin, athletic but androgynous, almost Caucasian with its alluring but empty, blue eyes and blonde hair.
Abir Karmakar Doll House, 2010, Oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Abir Karmakar, Happy family, 2010, Oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Abir Karmakar Boyfriends, 2011, Oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cms, Image courtesy the artist
The child-lover fantasy, deviation too, counters and complements the facility of masculine power and of the longing
for the pure basis of carnal desire that can soothe both sides. Thus, the nymphet has had its incarnations as an
epitome of chaste grace and of its ambiguity and as the spoilt Lolita including her smut erotica versions. “Doll I” by
K.T. Shiva Prasad, straight on as well in a baffling manner, suggests the borderline of such mingled yet conflicted
elements. The slender girl from a foreign pinup poster, delicate, lyrical and fragile on the crumpled bed-sheets,
seems almost virtuous in the white, laced gown, although her fresh complexion turns mature under the mascara,
lipstick and rouge, while the translucent fabric hints at her nudity. Objectified and available to the male gaze,
she poses but also naturally seeks comfort in the Teddy bear nestling on her private parts. The tactile plasticity
impact of the figure with the toy’s cast shadow becomes destabilised by the utterly two-dimensional rustic
leather puppets moving on a level virtually disconnected from and as if unaware of the rest of the canvas, still
linked with it. The sword-wielding couple of ribald jesters in arousal enact a battle of the sexes. Their bold
exaggeration holds energy, hilarity, affirmation and innocence of its own kind, one arising from the lack of pretence.
A bearded puppet, still on a separate plane, is nevertheless observing the scene, and the spectator can intuit that the
artist is confusing, testing and goading our complacent perception to admit multiplicity in the ways of seeing when
diverse realities, cultures and emotional sensibilities ignore one another, superimpose at random, become mutually
fascinated and tentatively meet, a course easily triggered by sexual attraction. “Doll II” brings such unresolved
confluences to a pitch journeying through a dizzy, simultaneously frontal and upside-down landscape of the present
permeated by the past. A wooden statue of the great goddess mediates the hieratic fierceness of her voluptuous
grandeur and the lushness of a lovely rural woman, the painted facial contours both alien to and yet not dissimilar from
a lady’s or a doll’s make-up, of small town mannequins’ that display clothes and fancy underwear. The phallic humour
of Maramma riding the conquered buffalo demon mischievously echoes in the dated Western pornographic shot with
two ample nudes on a pig. From the reality-palimpsest a new mythological iconography is emerging, witnessed and
conjured by the incongruous but creatively potent physical togetherness of the Catholic “Saint, Spiderman and
Puppet”, each hero separate and static in his architectural set-up and in flatness or inserting himself dynamically into
the whole as though along with his own space-wrap.
K.T. Shiva Prasad Dolls I, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 153 x 107 cms, Image courtesy the artist
K.T. Shiva Prasad Dolls II, Oil on canvas, 183 x 130 cms, Image courtesy the artist
K.T. Shiva Prasad Trade, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 170 x 118 cms, Image courtesy the artist
K.T. Shiva Prasad Saint,Spiderman and puppet, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 183 x 130 cms, Image courtesy the artist
However symbolic, metaphorical or philosophical may be the meaning behind grand temple statuary and its
folk manifestations, Hinduism encompasses a gradation of divine forms that are rather literal in their closeness to
ordinary life. Unlike the immovable stone icons in sancta sanctorum, their smaller equivalents in bronze are worshipped
during rituals that follow routines of well off homes. Priests wake them up in the morning, bathe, anoint, dress and
feed, entertain and put to bed for a siesta and for the night. Not surprisingly so, the hieratic canon of their representation
contains residues of beautiful human beings, even dolls, which is particularly evident in Krishna’s case whose myth
centres on his enchanting prankster childhood and his desirability as a youthful lover. In everyday household
poojas performed mostly by women this gains importance and intimacy not devoid of a compensatory role, being
supported by relevant motifs that recur in feminine crafts. Y. Jayamma, an elderly retired lecturer, never married and
obsessively devotes her spare time to making figurines of gods and mythological episodes from a variety of sea shells.
She lives with them, in fact, in her Mysore house filled to the brim by such sculptures. Caringly pieced together from
hundred of shells, most of them are appealing and doll-cute in a conventional way, quite like the baby Krishna seen in
the arms of “Pootani”, the ogress who, disguised as a young mother, ventured to kill him with the poisoned milk of her
breasts. The moment a wild, frightening theme is taken up aesthetic politeness becomes ruptured unearthing
passionate boldness, unbridled phantasmagoria and subconscious fears. The female demon here still has some of the
corporeal allure of a splendid divinity evoked by the rounded, glistening smoothness of the large shells, her pointed
nipples curling with their pattern. The fragmented crusts on her face, however, look hard and rugged like scales that
encase the bulging, crimson eyes, while the huge mouth opens wide and a pitch-black cascade of dishevelled hair falls
to the ground. Another ogress with rib bone mouldings on her shell body, “Surase” has almost swallowed the apian hero
Hanuman together with his tail who can be spotted now between the two rows of her fangs. The realness of these
apparitions for the believer could be admitting the latent male apprehension of the admired but formidable and deadly
mother, perhaps also traces of the threatening doll come alive. Of course, all the demons were eventually vanquished
by the gods, Krishna having drunk Pootani’s life with her milk, but their images are potent enough to scare children.
Y Jayamma Surase, Sea shells, hair, wood, 45 x 27.5 x 20 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Y Jayamma Pootani, Sea shells, hair, wood, 37.5 x 27.5 x 17.5 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Phenomena changing popular culture especially affect urban youth exposed to international media, advertising,
digital games, animation and the internet. If ancient deities remain entrenched in national and personal identity, in
institutions and entrepreneurship; young people look up to novel paragons and commercial brands. Rather than
bemoan the loss of ethnicity and the dissonances it causes, Tonni (Anthony Roche), not without knowing the latent
ironies and dangers here, embraces both worlds to celebrate, not even their plurality but the creative fusion they
promise. His enthusiastic optimism trusts city people sourcing from their themes and aesthetics to speak in an
accessible, entertaining manner in order to make reflection penetrate the newness of the familiar. Tonni’s images are,
indeed, excitingly hybrid emblems of Indian contemporariness structured by punning differences in similarity that locate
a loose unity beyond their disparate origins. His wholehearted acceptance of the emerging iconography brings him into
the centre of his paintings in the form of self-portraits as Mickey Mouse, his childhood favourite, now equipped with
enormous fish-eyes that like in ancient Indian art project out of face contours. “The fortune of the beast” pictures an
elegant Kamadhenu, the cow which grants all desires, with a smiling Mickey Mouse head and wings, a Hindu icon that
could also be its Islamic counterpart. Among many ornate designs, it seems to contain and surpass both its sisters from
rural reality and the more sober, mighty bull of the American financial giant’s logo, its name half-transposed into the
Devanagari script. The stylised silhouette in bright acrylics has assimilated some qualities of the computer design
where it was first visualised, but nearly frees itself in its vibrancy and expectant excitement, while picking up the
essence of indigenous classical and folk silhouettes, the pliant tautness of its linearity laden with plasticity. The
simple-minded, fast-running divine emissary Hanuman holding a mighty mace, who epitomises unshaken loyalty to
Rama, tears open his heart to reveal instead of the god the Nike symbol as his “Brand aphrodisiac”. The artist can see
amusing, sometimes humiliating, vestiges of colonialism in the local infatuation with light complexion and whitening
cosmetics, nonetheless, he is sure that the sheer drive of the rapidly growing country will shape and defend its new
avatar’s assertive inclusiveness. So, framed by the servitude of the Air India maharajas and enveloped in Victorian
floral motifs, the triple, multi-coloured punch doll that always gets up sounds defying when it asks “What is the colour
of my skin?” to make the racist past irrelevant against the abundance of exuberant decorative motifs.
Anthony Roche, Fortune of the beast, 2010, Acrylic on canvas, 135 x 135 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Anthony Roche, Brand aphrodisiac, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 210 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Anthony Roche, What is the colour of my skin?, Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 210 cms, Image courtesy the artist
An even younger artist, Princess Pea not only finds herself in the midst of such cultural layering, but social
conditioning and pressure exerted on her gender makes her completely internalise its manifestations and expectations,
although with a much sharper rift occurring between the enjoyment and tension or disorientation it generates. In an
urban, globalising India which is altering its values while remaining steeped in archaic beliefs and imageries, she
metamorphoses into a creature of composite identity, the merrily, sensitively experienced reality being at the same time
interrogated and challenged through the distance of irony, playful lightness and puns that hold as much charm as
seriousness. Like a good girl-child eager to please her dear grown-ups, she literally becomes a doll whose
contradictory look has absorbed their often dissonant aspirations. She goes through the motions of the masquerade
with a happy bravado, convinced about her immense self-worth but uncomfortable with her imperfections or ill-fitting to
reveal the artificiality of the disagreeing ideals that are more or less consciously forced on her. She does it with an
outrageously assertive defiance of pop icons which, nonetheless, lets her fragility be recognised. The huge, stylised
head of a doll with dreamy, naive eyes resembles its cliché image in animation, and almost weighs down her slender
limbs. In a world that worships glamour, celebrity and skinny models, the ancient paradigm of divine beauty still admires
full, sensual bodies of majesty requiring for babies and teenagers to be plump. Thus, Princess turns into a classical
statue of the great goddess or a tree nymph as “Salabhanjika”. Her posture follows iconography to an extent, if its
effortless yet somewhat awkward fluidity suggests the kind of flaunting typical to anorexic models and girls coaxed
towards precautious maturity who imitate film stars. The bright pastel hue and the wealth of intricate jewellery gaily hint
at vegetal symbolism and attributes of temple idols, although its shine has the smoothness of moulded plastic toys. The
traditional necklaces, girdles and chains, meant to encircle and emphasise the erotic body, hang somewhat loose on
the thin figure in a smartly draped, tight mini-skirt. It is more likely to befit cover pages of the “Vague” magazine, where
as a model Princess quite professionally displays an array of high-end designer dresses. Among the pleasures of her
enticing self-confidence, some sadness enters the witty sarcasm in the announcements about the commercially
steered advice and gossip in the issue, and the spectator can intuit longing for tenderness against the shot of an
enigmatic boyfriend.
Princess Pea Shalabhanjika, Fibreglass, resin, auto paint, 23 x 26 x 18 cms, Edition 2, Image courtesy the Pea family and Rob Dean Art
Princess Pea Subscription for a year – Vague series, January 2010, Epson Inkjet print on Archival paper, pasted on magazine
27.5 x 21 x 2 cms, Image courtesy the Pea family and Rob Dean Art
Princess Pea Subscription for a year – Vague series, November 2010, Epson Inkjet print on Archival paper, pasted on magazine
27.5 x 21 x 2 cms, Image courtesy the Pea family and Rob Dean Art
Princess Pea Subscription for a year – Vague series, December 2010, Epson Inkjet print on Archival paper, pasted on magazine
27.5 x 21 x 2 cms, Image courtesy the Pea family and Rob Dean Art
For Chintan Upadhyay the transforming coexistence of the old, patriarchal world and its current internationalisation
in the context of commercial attitudes has something toxic in it that instead of bringing a creative synthesis will lead
to a dead-end. The middle class can now pamper itself with apparently customised but actually mass-produced
objects of desire and personality prototypes. In fact, there are plenty of variants within each model to choose from,
although their differences prove to be deceptive. Technology, industry, medicine and science roped in by industry,
business and advertising offer a paradise of means to suit every fantasy, craving and practicality. The digital
medium, cosmetic surgery, fashion and genetic engineering appeal to our individual necessities, dreams and
egos supplying those, however, in a sequence of clones derived from a popular, readymade stock. Amid the
facile elegance of glamour imagery, the country’s aesthetic heritage too becomes pulled in and diluted as snug,
sugary and surface-bound ethnicity. In Upadhyay’s sculptures and paintings the phenomenon gives birth to
babies, half-doll and half-human mutants. Since people tend to treat their children as repositories and instruments
of fulfilment for their own ambitions and convenience, he brings them more than what they would wish for.
His ever multiplying, larger-than-life babies are like subversive monuments to those wishes. Synthetic toy-resembling,
they come in all shapes, poses and exciting, pleasant colours to be repeated in series with slight alterations. Chubby
and firm, as their parents want them, they stand full of cocky confidence, the value of their position derived from their
being exclusively baby boys in accordance with the social fixation on male progeny, although the adorable shrewdness
of their faces does not allow the shadow of female foeticide to disappear. Eventually, the sense of the eerie, morbid and
hybrid grows on the viewer, the occasional detail of disfiguration hinting at android sterility for the future presaged by
the ominous “Cute demon looking for identity”. Upadhyay covers such smart Alecks, envelops and attires in painted
landscape and figural quotations from classical north Indian miniatures. When compared to the vibrant fluency of the
originals, the mere nicety of the contemporised, bazaar-quality copies, even under the sheen of gold, has surrendered
the ancient brilliance to the sleekness of plastic and the computer-generated foundation, so betraying the barren nature
of the mechanically applied ruses instead of a creative vision. The artist as “Chintu” finds no escape from participating
in the system.
Chintan Upadhyay Chintu, Fibreglass and gold leaf, 90 x 90 x 60 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Chintan Upadhyay Cute demon looking for identity, 2010, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 150 x 150 cms, Image courtesy the artist
Archana Hande takes a closer look at the manifestations and consequences of such designer humans scanning the
ethos and behaviour of present-day society as well as locating its roots in the past. Her continuing project
“Arrangeurownmarriage.com” is a playfully satirical and disturbing recreation-cum-exposure of popular internet sites
meant for young people looking for spouses of their preference. The inconsistency inherent in the title points to the
artist’s conclusion about the assumed freedom of individuals whose decisions are in fact dictated, like ever before, by
their partiality for common socio-religious background, economical advantages and compliance with conventions. In
tune with the self-serving, calculative consumerism of urban India, her presentation comes in the form of a shop
offering endless possibilities of selection from wedding and honeymoon plans to clothes and accessories, beauty
products with inevitable skin-whiteners, horoscopes and, of course, a variety of male and female types that can be
adjusted and pieced together by each browser from an array of body parts. Like in store windows and on shelves, pretty
eyes, mouths or chests of film actors and actresses wait to be picked up along with less identifiable heads, bums,
moustaches, lips and limbs that recall those of toys and mannequins. The sanitised kitsch of their attractiveness
without character makes them veritably uniform, so belying the trust in personal choice. Eventually, one cannot
separate the sense of fragmentation and randomness from the intended wholeness and consistency, while the fake
penetrates the real. The installation environment where one surfs the website under muted red light combines
oppressive cyber-booth cramping with the erotic charge of a boudoir-brothel. The objects it has amassed oscillate
between playthings in a doll house and signs of premeditated, stereotype-based strategy. Embodiments of modern
desire and fantasy coexist with older ones, for instance, the attachable crimson behinds alluding to the subterfuge
employed by women from a certain merchant community who used to paint their erogenous parts in order to lure family
men and prevent them from straying. As one plays god assembling one’s ideal spouse image, the artist both denies
that free-will can exist apart from how society has pre-programmed it and demonstrates that the newness of the act is
a mere offshoot from the entrenched system of endogamy within the caste, class, status, religion and language. At the
same time she queries the authenticity of that system, its pride in the purity of blood having been contradicted by the
mixed, if hidden and denied, nature of reality and by history.
Archana Hande Detail from installation www.arrangeurownmarriage.com, 2005 - 2011, website
Archana Hande Detail from www.arrangeurownmarriage.com, 2005 - 2011, Installation - website/ fibre/ cloth/ wood/ plastic/ digital print
variable, Image courtesy the artist
Archana Hande Detail from www.arrangeurownmarriage.com, 2005 - 2011, Installation - website/ fibre/ cloth/ wood/ plastic/ digital print
variable, Image courtesy the artist
Jasmeen Patheja’s fascination used to be photographing strangely poetic city nooks where mannequins, dolls
and toys confronted and connected with children and adults. The inert figures of fashion and commerce, of sensuality
and play seemed about to absorb simple or absurd human emotions and ideals of beauty, crudely yet touchingly naïve
as well as sophisticated, revealing a fragile physicality when damaged or discarded. In elusive reciprocation, people,
whether adults or children, responded to them with animated little girls over-dressed in frilly magnificence, male traders
somewhat bewildered around their dummies, young ladies posing in trendy clothes and fantastical costumes, applying
make-up and cosmetic masks. One could always feel a fluid mood of linkage in the forming between the artist and her
models. The urge for true interaction brought the on-going Blank Noise project centred on street harassment which,
from an accusatory approach and helping female victims, aims now at understanding both sides and mutual respect.
This experience underlies the slide projection piece “Eleven action heroes and an audience” in which participants were
asked to visualise their notions about good and bad girls while making eye contact Large size frames fill with close-up
faces of young women who, against the background of eerily pitching laughter, show nice, subdued expressions and
intense, exuberant ones. They look natural and poised: otherwise their grimaces exaggerate and simulate emotions
beginning to indicate exhaustion or duress. Mascara and lipstick are used for self-contentment and appreciation from
others, but discomfort sets in and the smeared make-up runs under some incomprehensible stress. If complexity and
artifice that belong to maturing continue to live with us later, so does the spirited freshness of childhood imagination. In
fact, the artist’s greatest inspiration as well as a constant collaborator in art endeavours has been her grandmother,
Indri who is as enthusiastic about everything new as about her precious early memories. In “Catch me if you can” the
old lady with a gentle, loving face who spent her youth in Burma and once had a dream of becoming an actress, is
filmed during a nostalgia trip to that land dancing to the tune of a Burmese song as a princess in a tall, sparkling crown.
Dressed in a rich, floral robe whose patterns reverberate in the sun-spotted canopy of foliage, she does not need an
audience and is happily enacting for herself a mock-scary conversation with the tree god-ling, not wholly doll-like,
rather embracing the child retained within. The spectator peering inside through the somewhat widening lenses on the
surface of the box is able to virtually enter her magical world.
Jasmeen Patheja, Stills from video 11 action heroes and an audience – in collaboration with Blank Noise Action Heroes 2007
Projection, photo performance / sound, Edition of 11, Images courtesy the artists (Jasmeen and Blank Noise)
Jasmeen Patheja, Still from video Catch me if you can – in collaboration with Indri (actor and grandmother), 2011
Installation, photo performance / projection / sound, Edition of 4, Image courtesy the artists (Jasmeen and Indri)
SUREKHA
Born 1965, India
Lives and works in Bengaluru, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
2010
Unclaimed - urban f(r)ictions, Samuha, Bengaluru
10, Chancery Lane Gallery, Hongkong
Costumes d’enfants, miroir des grands, curated by Aurelie Samuel and Caroline Arhuero, Guimet Museum, Paris
Young Artist Bukarest Biennale, Rumania curated by Mica Ghergescu
2007
Flames, Flowers and Other Images, sculpture, photo and video installation,
Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, India
Communing with Urban Heroines, photo and video installation, Max Mueller Bhavan, Bengaluru, India
AYISHA ABRAHAM
Born 1963, London, UK
Lives and works in Bengaluru, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2010
Night Shift, Collaborative Exhibtion with Dina Boswank, Max Mueller Bhavan, Bengaluru, India
Video Art India, Caixa Forum, Barcelona, Spain
2009
Subterranea, Samuha Artist’s Collective, Bengaluru, India
Material Texts, Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi, India
2008
Indian Highway, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
2005
Film Tales, Gallery SKE, Bengaluru, India
2009
Material Texts, Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi, India
2008
Indian Highway, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
PUSHPAMALA N.
Born 1956, Bengaluru, India
Lives and works between Bengaluru and New Delhi, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2010
Motherland, live performance in collaboration with Mamta Sagar, Samuha Artist Collective, Bangaluru, India
2008-2009
Paris Autumn, video and photo installation, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; Bose Pacia Gallery, New York, USA
and Nature Morte, New Delhi, India
2006
Pushpamala N, photo-performance work, Nature Morte and Bose Pacia, Milan, Italy
Paris Autumn, video and photo installation, Galerie Zurcher, Paris, France
Group
2010
The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Where Three Dreams Cross, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK
2009
Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; Essl Museum, Vienna
Austria; Mori Museum Tokyo, Japan
The Self and the Other: Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography, La Virreina Centre de la Image, Barcelona
and Artium, Vitoria, Spain *cat
2008
Modern India: Art and Culture in the Indian Sub-Continent 1857- 2007, Institut Valencia d’Modern, Spain
BARBARA ASH
Born 1966, London U.K.
Lives and works between Bristol, U.K and Bengaluru, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
2009
Sugar & Spice (solo show) Kashi Art Gallery, Kerala, India
Second Bangkok Triennale, Selected by Tetsuya Noda, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts, Art & Cultural Centre,
Bangkok, Thailand, touring to various institutions around Thailand.
2007
Adam’s rib, Eve’s air in her hair, curated by Melina Messina, Brooklyn Museum, SOHO20,New York, U.S.A.
2006
Sculpture in the Workplace, curated by Ann Elliott, Two Person Show with Laura Ford, One Canada Square,
Canary Wharf, London, U.K.
2002 - 03
Beauty & Corruption, Crawford Open 3, curated by Eugenie Tai, Brooklyn Museum and Hugh Mulholland,
Ormeau Baths Gallery, Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, Ireland
ABIR KARMAKAR
Born 1977, Siliguri, India
Lives and works in Vadodara, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2008
Within the Walls, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India
Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, India
2007
In The Old Fashioned Way, Aicon Gallery, London, UK
2006
Interiors, Galerie Heike Curtze, Berlin
2005
From my Photo Album, The Museum Gallery, Mumbai, India
Group
2010
Changing Skin curated by Marta Jakimowicz, The Fine Art Company, Mumbai, India
INDIA AWAKEN - Under the Banyan Tree, Essl Museum, Vienna
Have I Ever Opposed You? New Art from India and Pakistan, Faye Fleming & Partner, Geneva
2009
A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art, Saffron Art and The Guild Art Gallery, New York, USA
Threshold: Forging Narratives in South Asian Contemporary Art, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA
K.T. SHIVAPRASAD
Born 1947, Madikere, India
Lives and works in Hassan, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2007
Untitled, The Museum Art Gallery, Mumbai, India
Group
2009
Group Show curated by Nataraj Budal S, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, India
2008
The Museum Art Gallery, by Osmosis Gallery, Mumbai, India
Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai, India
2006
Gallery Romain Rolland, New Delhi, India
Y. JAYAMMA
Born Karnataka, India
Lives and works in Mysore, India
EXHIBITIONS
50th All India Kannada Literature Fair
Mysore Dassera Exhibition
Jayamma hails from a family that held an important position during the Maharaja’s rule, having supervised many of
today’s heritage buildings in Mysore. She is a retired lecturer from JSSD Educational College, Mysore, who devotes all
her time to her art.
ANTHONY ROCHE
Born 1974, Bengaluru, India
Lives and works in Bengaluru, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2009
Brand India, Samuha Artists’ Collective, Bengaluru, India
Group
2006
Suvarna Karnataka, CAVA Art Gallery, Mysore, India
Annual Show, Venketappa Art Gallery, Bengaluru, India
PRINCESS PEA
Born 1980, Punjab, India
Lives and works in New Delhi, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2010
Supercarlifragilisticexpialidicious, Rob Dean Art, Blackall Studio, London, UK
2009
Supercarlifragilisticexpialidicious, Rob Dean Art, India Art Summit, New Delhi, India
Group
2007
Now and Then, curated by Shefali Somani, Shrine Empire Gallery XXXX
2006
A Compensation for what has been lost, curated by Johnny ML, Travancore Art Gallery, Kerala, India
2005
Visual Dialogue, curtaed by Peter Nagy, Nature Morte, New Delhi, India
2004
There’s a place in the Sun, curated by Johnny ML, Krishnan’s Collection Art Gallery, New Delhi, India
CHINTAN UPADHYAY
Born 1972, Rajasthan, India
Lives and works in Mumbai, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2010
Nature God, Sakshi Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
Mistake, India Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
2009
Khathi Mithi, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India
2008
Pet Shop, Ashish Balram Nagpal Galleries, Mumbai, India
Group
2010
Mix Match, a performance produced in Performance Festival Ex Teresa, Mexico
Finding India, MOCA, Taipei, Taiwan
2009
Finding India, Seoul Convention Centre, Seoul, Korea
ARCHANA HANDE
Born 1970, Bengaluru, India
Lives and works in Bengaluru and Mumbai
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2010
All is Fair in Magic White, Z2O Galleria / Sara Zanin, Roma, Italy
Choudhuri Bari, Archana Devi’s Chamber, Samuha, Bengaluru, India
2009
All is Fair in Magic White, Nature Morte, New Delhi, India
Relics of Grey, Residency in JNU, New Delhi
2007
Relics of Grey, Chemould Prescott, Road, Mumbai, India
Group
2011
Against All Odds: A Contemporary Response to the Historiography of Archiving, Collecting and Museums in India,
curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India
(Project - Choudhuri Bari, Archana Devi’s Chamber)
2008
Farewell to Post-Colonialism, 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, curated by Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj and
Chang Tsong-zung, Guangdong Museum of Art, China
(Project - www.arrangeurownmarriage.com)
JASMEEN PATHEJA
Born 1979, Kolkata, India
Lives and works in Bengaluru and Kolkata, India
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2009
Running Amok, photography, Tasveer, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, India
Group
2010
Blank Noise Action Heroes (audio installation with testimonials of chikan with participating Action Heroes in Tokyo)
curated by Emma Ota, show organized by Media Actions, Arts Chiyoda 3331, Tokyo, Japan
Moments of a Long Pause / 2 channel video (Blank Noise) for Her Work is Never Done, curated by Bose
Krishnamachari, Gallery BMB, Mumbai, India
2008
Moments of a Long Pause / 2 channel video (Blank Noise) commissioned by Bronx Museum of Arts, for group show
Street Art. Street Life, curated by Lydia Yee, New York, USA
2008
Blank Noise Action Heroes (audio installation with testimonials of fear and the city with participating Action Heroes in
Manchester) for “What Do You Want?” curated by Kathy Rae Huffman at Cornerhouse as part of the Asian Triennial
Manchester with Shisha Arts, Manchester, UK
GALLERY SUMUKHA
Bengaluru and Chennai, India
Gallery Sumukha, Bengaluru begun from a modest space in 1996, has evolved over the years and is currently housed
in the largest private gallery space of South India, with a gallery in Chennai as well, which opened in 2006.
Sumukha caters to a wide audience, nationally and internationally, and has a history of working with external curators
and artists from various parts of the world. It supports artists in terms of commissions and relevant spaces to expose their
conceptual thinking, thus marking it as an international space. Simultaneously it presents Indian Contemporary artists
abroad. Gallery Sumukha is also a platform for established and next generation artists to showcase all forms and media
of Contemporary Art.
ROB DEAN ART LTD
London, UK
Rob Dean Art Ltd is a UK based fine art company with a focus on Indian and South Asian Art. Rob and his wife Sonali
opened the company in London in 2002 with the critically acclaimed show ‘Souza and Friends’ and have been actively
involved with Asian art ever since. Since its inception RDA Ltd has exhibited a wide range of works by Indian artists
including M F Husain, F N Souza, S H Raza, Ram Kumar, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Kriti Arora and Princess Pea.
Rob Dean works as an advisor to Private and Corporate collectors of Indian art including the Fine Art Fund. Prior to
setting up the company Rob was a Director of Sotheby’s New York and the International Head of its Indian and Southeast
Asian Department. Prior to working at Sotheby’s he was an Indian Art specialist at Christie’s. He has been involved with
Indian auctions for over a decade in London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Paris. He continues to lecture on
Indian art and the art market, most recently at the Sotheby’s Institute in London and the London Business School.