NOTE ON ARTISTS

ATUL BHALLA is an installation artist and photographer based in Delhi. His body of work is concerned with issues of the city and relentless urbanization. He applies photography as an extension of the conceptual framework for most of his work. Atul Bhalla deals not only with the body, but its performativity, relating to cultural practices, where there is an oblique equation of violence with the male body. He rarely represents the male body in its entirety, rather presenting it in fragments in the act of performance. His own body is represented in a performative mode, and photography is applied as a series of documents around the process of performance.

BV SURESH is a painter based in Baroda and is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U Baroda. His video work, ‘Retakes of the Shadows’ reflects on the constant threat of violence inherent in institutions of patriarchy. His critique of maleness and masculinity includes the institution of art and its practice.

KRITI ARORA, a Delhi based artist works with dislocation, migration and fractured lives. Masculinity is a subtle undercurrent in her imagery. There is an interplay of absence and presence in her portrayal of the body. Her series on migrant labour from Bihar and on policewomen in Delhi relocates masculinity outside of class and gender. Much of her photography exhibited here is located in Kashmir. The patriarchal/masculine references in her work are often represented from the point of view of a woman.

RAMESHWAR BROOTA has constantly worked with the male body, whether as painter, photographer or film maker. During the first half of the 20th century, men were often associated with images of industrialization. Broota’s work centres on a late 20th century shift, where man is no longer another cog in the industrial machine, but a being – distinct, fragile and vulnerable. His emphasis on detail, whether wrinkles, body hair or skin texture, accounts for the tactile quality of the representation of the male body. Through the act of representation, treatment of the male body, he questions notions of gaze and the objectification of the body.

SHEBA CHHACHHI is an installation artist, photographer, activist, and writer based in New Delhi. Her art practice overlaps with her political and activist engagements. Warrior/Saint: is ‘a reflection on masculinity, juxtaposing the Buddha with images of macho heroes from hindi movie fan material.’
In this work, violence as commonplace, normative and masculine is reiterated through the stereotype – ‘the man with the gun’.

SUNIL GUPTA as an artist/photographer traverses many identities and places. His concerns as an artist revolve around homosexuality and exile. Using personal history as an archive, Sunil Gupta constructs photographs as a record of exile, relationships, sexual/political difference; he contextualizes the personal in the social or the public in the private. His entire body of work is a powerful contestation of a hegemonic, normative masculinity, representing it instead, as fragile and bordering on the other.