JEHANGIR NICHOLSON ART FOUNDATION
The Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in collaboration with the Peabody Essex Museum presents
Mind the Dash: The Modern/Contemporary & the ‘In-Between’ in Indian Art
A Talk Series | 11, 18, 25 September 2020
This series brings international scholars and seminal public collections together, exploring connections and continuities through Modern & Contemporary Indian Art – to bridge divides and imagine a future. These conversations are aimed towards a nuanced (re)looking at art historical terms, exploring two key collections along the way.
September 25
Collectives, Composites & Collaboration
Itinerant Pasts & Futures / Puja Vaish
This session will explore self & belonging in the imaging of the body and the imagining of the world through artworks from the JNAF collection.
Progressive P/partitions? / Zehra Jumabhoy
This talk will discuss the Indian Moderns in the context of Partition & Pakistan: how does this ‘Other’ Nation figure in the formation and development of Indian Modernism?
Lahore Art Circle/ A New Beginning in Pakistan / Samina Iqbal
This talk will be focused on the rise of Modern Art in the newly established Pakistan via a small group of artists called Lahore Art Circle founded in 1952.
"Queering" South Asia / Siddhartha V. Shah
Turning to the South Asian diaspora, Shah discusses the work of artists who envision a transcendent future that is post-race, post-gender, and post-nation.
Debate and Q & A moderated by Mortimer Chatterjee
Watch now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STOcGvvSxvg
Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy is a UK-based art historian, writer and curator specializing in modern and contemporary South Asian art. She was the Steven and Elena Heinz Scholar at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she completed her doctorate on contemporary Indian art and nationalism and was an Associate Lecturer. She continues to lecture on Asian art and theory on undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes at various universities in the UK and South Asia.She Guest Curated an exhibition on Bombay’s Progressive Artists’ Group at the Asia Society Museum in New York (2018-2019). She has been a consultant on the Peabody Essex Museum’s rehang of its Herwitz collection.
Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah is Curator of Indian and South Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts – the oldest continually-running museum in the United States that is home to the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection of post-independence art from India. He has spent the past two years reinterpreting and reinstalling the collection which opens to the public in November 2020. He earned his BA in art history at Johns Hopkins University, an MA in Hindu philosophy and psychoanalysis from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and a PhD in South Asian Art at Columbia University.
Puja Vaish is a curator, artist and the Director of the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai, India. Between 2013 – 2019, Vaish worked as a curator at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum. Previously, she was a lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, Delhi College of Art and the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi institute of Architecture. Vaish completed her Bachelors and Masters at Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda.
Mortimer Chatterjee received his MA in the History of Indian Art and Architecture from SOAS and co-founded Chatterjee & Lal with his wife, Tara Lal, in 2003. Today, based in Mumbai’s Colaba art district, the gallery is focused on contemporary artists as well as historical material related to both fine art and design. Chatterjee has also been responsible for maintaining major private and corporate art collections. In 2010, he co-authored a publication on the art collection of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), along with curating an exhibition of that collection at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai.
Dr. Samina Iqbal is a practicing artist, art historian, and an academic. She received her PhD in art historical studies from the Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA in 2016. Her research interest is South Asian modern and contemporary art and her PhD dissertation was on the study of modern art in Pakistan in the first decade of its establishment through a small group of artist collective called Lahore Art Circle. Samina is currently an Assistant Professor in the Centre of Media Studies, Art & Design, at the Lahore School of Economics, Pakistan.