CLOSING SPEAKER
Parsing the Earth: Reflections upon the first Indian Ceramics Triennale
WENDY GERS
1 Madhvi Subrahmanian, Sharbani Das Gupta, Reyaz Badaruddin, Neha Kudchadkar, Vineet Kacker and Anjani Khanna.
2 These include Anjani Khanna, Asim Paul, Partha Dasgupta and Shalini Dam among many others.
3 Consider for example works by Juree Kim and Danijela Pivašević Tenner.
4 Both Ester Beck and Juree Kim’s work engaged with performance.
5 The multi-media installation Made Out of Place, presented by the British Ceramics Biennial presents an ongoing collaboration between British artist Joanne Ayre and Warli artists Ramesh and Rasika Hengadi.
6 Ashwini Bhat has collaborated with the poet Forrest Gander for her installation.
7 Artists working with sound and music include Vishnu Thozur Kolleri.
8 Madhvi Subrahmanian activated her installation by the thoughtful use of light.
9 Both Neha Kudchadkar and Vineet Kacker prominently feature photography in their installations.
10 Installations by Reyaz Badaruddin and Adil Writer prominently include and explore painted canvasses.
11 Among others, Ajay Kanwal, Jacques Kaufmann, Ray Meeker, Aarti Vir, Rakhee Kane, P.R. Daroz, Triveni Prasad Tiwari’s installations engage with or are architectural elements.
12 The clay and cow dung figures of Benitha Perciyal, the laser-cut terracotta tile sculpture by Tallur or Sharbani Das Gupta’s brick labyrinth.
13 Élodie Alexandre and Ingrid Murphy both included digital components.
Breaking Ground, the first Indian Ceramics Triennale was the occasion to explore the state of contemporary Indian and international ceramics. Curated by six leading mid-career Indian ceramic artists,¹ the exhibition is a testimony to two years of exceptional tenacity and vision. Visitors were treated to both, the spectacular architectural oeuvre of the prominent Indian architect Charles Correa, the Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK), and forty seven equally ambitious installations of raw and fired clay. The JKK also hosted a collateral retrospective exhibition of local painter, muralist and designer, Kripal Singh Shekhawat. This little gem shed light onto the artist responsible for the revival of Jaipur Blue Pottery. As a professional Curator, Art Historian and Researcher, I have had the occasion to visit, jury and direct ceramics biennales and triennials across the globe, including in Australia, China, France, Great Britain, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the US. I was thus extremely curious to see the out-come of this artist-curated event, produced by colleagues whose oeuvres I hold in high esteem. I was not disappointed. This exhibition is mammoth in scale, with seriously ambitious works and installations. I have never seen a ceramics event of this magnitude and quality. Both the organisers and the artists stepped up to the challenge, dreamed big, and delivered bigger! As the first such international contemporary ceramics event, the Indian Ceramics Triennale serves as a landmark. It evidences a clear rupture with national ceramics exhibitions of the past. These traditionalist institutions advocate a rigid purism, insisting that works submitted are entirely made of fired clay, and rejecting multi-media submissions. Breaking Ground embraces multimedia sculptural installations,² raw clay ephemeral works,³ performative pieces,⁴ and collaborative works that engage with local vernacular traditions.⁵ Installations engaged with other artistic disciplines such as poetry,⁶ sound or music,⁷ light,⁸ photography,⁹ painting,ⁱ⁰ architecture - both in terms of scale and form,¹¹ and other materials.¹² Digital components are a feature of some installations.¹³
It seems fitting that as I write this text from the lofty peaks of the Himalayas, the monsoon rains form a melodic sound-scape. Breaking Ground is seminal to a metaphorical cycle of artistic renewal within the Indian artistic landscape. The curatorial team cleared a symbolic field, tilled the soil and sowed the seeds of curiosity, innovation, diversity, collaboration and excellence. There is no doubt about the exceptional quality of this first harvest. The ensuing downpour will nourish this field, and India will harvest the benefits of this world-leading creative endeavour.
Wendy Gers is a curator and art historian, with a specialisation in modern and contemporary ceramics. Founder of the digital publishing company, wgartbooks.com and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, she has curated international exhibitions and biennales such as Cont{r}act Earth, The First Central China Ceramics Biennale, Henan, Post-colonialism?, Israel, and the 2014 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, Terra-Nova. She has authored Scorched Earth: A Century of Southern African Potteries, exhibition catalogues, book chapters, and articles in scholarly journals. Her interests include ceramics, critical theory, cultural studies, sustainability, post-colonial studies and curatorial practices.
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