Author V. Sanjay Kumar in conversation with Sadanand Menon
A SITE art space & The Collective Studio Collaboration
21st February 2015
SITE art space & The Collective Studio Baroda have collaborated for a year to make a
series of exhibitions as a gift for the city of Baroda. As both share
a vision for art that focuses upon community and interaction as seminal
features that we wish to engage with, as well as highlight alternative spaces
of exhibiting and discourse as valuable and critical to sustaining an energized
and ever evolving art context, this collaboration has proved to be most
rewarding in the responses it has garnered. That our endeavor has generated
excitement and participation that allows for this idea of cultural engagement
to be meaningful for the city of Baroda, is finally what has mattered the most
to those of us who have put this all together.
For those
who do not know us intimately, SITE art space being situated in GIDC
Makarpura lies within the heart of the industrial production zone, making this
a venue that defies the conventional norms associated with an art gallery. It is co-owned by Manish Maheshwari & Piyush Maheshwari, two brothers who combine their skills within a very successful partnership. Within this compound exists a fabricating unit, an exhibition gallery, a
display space of art products designed for commercial use, a library, a
residency program unit & a pop up café space. Such a set-up acts as a reaffirmation
for the need of alternative spaces in a city where the community of artists and
the audience can more intimately be engaged with discourse and interaction, and
where the agenda is not market driven.
On the
other hand, The Collective Studio Baroda
was set up by me in the traditions of the guru
shishya practice where students and teachers live and work together. It is
a space of learning that does not charge any fee nor accept any payback via
works of art in exchange either. Founded on the principle of trust and belief in
the commitment and passion to study art from the comprehension of it being a
holistic world of imbibing knowledge and experience, and where the rigors of
long hours of studio practice are mandatory, the selection of students and
young artists are through invitation only. Teaching, residencies, lecture
programs, curatorial projects and fund raising are amongst some of the major
activities that we focus on.
Perhaps most
significant is that the exhibition Subtextual Documentalists that we
showed in November 2014 of Jyoti Bhatt & Manisha Gera Baswani’s
photographic archival documentation of their own cultural contemporaries,
opened on the 19th of February 2015 in Mumbai, where it was presented
in collaboration with Sakshi Gallery, and will then be showcased along with the
addition of Korean artist Noh Suntag at the Korean Cultural Centre in in Delhi
August 2015.
Integrated within this
collaborative program we invited Ankush Safaya, a Delhi based artist to Baroda,
to do a one month residency between SITE
art space & The Collective
Studio Baroda. He used the
fabrication unit to do a sculptural installation that is now on permanent
display in the garden of SITE art space. Testimony to the sense of community
that Baroda culturally generates, Ankush Safaya has now relocated to Baroda to
join The Collective Studio on a more permanent basis.
In hosting an evening
of interaction between Sanjay Kumar and Sadanand Menon as the closing chapter
to the year of collaboration, author Sanjay Kumar returned to Baroda with his latest book Virgin
Gingerly to talk with Sadanand
Menon about narratives that deal with the city. Both of them really need no
formal introduction. However it would be remiss of me to skip that formality. V. Sanjay Kumar was
born in 1960 in Tamil Nadu. His schooling and undergraduate years were in
Chennai. He completed his MBA in 1982 and joined the corporate world in Mumbai.
After a two year stint with an investment bank he set up his first business
venture in financial services in 1984. Thereafter he set up a software business
as well, in the banking space. His
entry into the world of art began in 1988 with a business partnership under the
name Sakshi Gallery. Sakshi is based in Mumbai and is one of
the premier galleries for art in India. Over the last 25 years it has promoted
many successful artists and hosted some notable shows in India and overseas.
His
first foray into writing was ‘View from the Edge’, a non-fiction
publication that was based on a themed art exhibition that he curated in 1995.
Since 2008 he has written two novels. Artist, Undone his first novel had
the art world as a central character. Virgin Gingelly his second book is a
narration on a street in Chennai. He currently stays in Chennai near Elliots
Beach but will soon be relocating to Bangalore with his family.
Sadanand Menon who lives and works out of Chennai is a nationally reputed arts editor, a teacher of
cultural journalism, a widely published photographer, arts curator and writer
on politics ecology and the arts. He is currently faculty at the Asian College
of Journalism in Chennai as well as at the IIT in Chennai. A long-time collaborator with Chandralekha, the pioneering and radical
dancer/choreographer, he is deeply involved with issues connected with the
creation of a contemporary Indian dance practice, and has travelled extensively
in India and abroad as the technical director of Chandralekha's performances. He
has convened several national-level seminars and round-tables on diverse
subjects like human rights, media, visual arts, cartooning, photography,
stage-light design, dance, theatre and architecture.
Sanjay Kumar in sharing his territory of ideas related to his new book allowed for Sadanand Menon to take us through a conversational space with
the author that opened up an interpretative space for us to share.
Baroda is known as a cultural center of art that prides itself on the
legacy it upholds of discourse and debate being a vital pivot to this city’s
creative practices. Therefore it seemed fitting that as our concluding program
we had this event that allowed our city the opportunity to engage with a
glimpse into how an author defines his premise of articulation, crafts his
language skills and transposes his personal experiences into investing his
narratives with insights that hold our imaginative territory in sheer delight.
