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Review

A Changing World

Arpita Singh’s canvases in her solo exhibition Meeting at Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi were awash in shades of blue. In several of her paintings on display, it appeared as if tides carrying flotsam and jetsam had swept over them, generating surfaces swimming with detail. Nowhere was this more evident than in the poignantly titled The swans did not come back this year. Irregular patches of white, oddly reminiscent of corrugated roofs of shanty houses, peppered the waterscape as did a few stretches of brown and lettering in differing colours and sizes. If in the past Singh inserted flora or custard apples to fill in empty spaces in the pictorial plane, then here her flower fetish was strangely absent.

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Review

Nasreen Mohamedi: Singularity and Sociability

Nasreen Mohamedi’s hand-written letter to her close friend, artist Nilima Sheikh exudes a sense of both restraint and tenderness. With her formal handwriting, she composes what appears as a verse of concrete poetry – simultaneously referencing and exploring ideas of space – on a piece of graph paper. Providing a window into the late Modernist’s preoccupations with nature, abstraction, and the limits of perception, this letter, describing the seashore at Kihim, also inspires the title of her latest retrospective at Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF) – Nasreen Mohamedi: The Vastness, Again and Again.

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Review

Weaving a World: Kanishka Raja’s Ground Control

Bright as a computer game on a screen, Ground Control began with references to music, borrowing its title from David Bowie, and has an aerial perspective, if not the tin-can view. Is the artist Ground Control and who is Major Tom? The roles reverse playfully, and the show, like a game, moves effortlessly between footprints of buildings, courts and playing fields, and outlines of urban spaces. The vibrant several shades of colour — earthy oranges and reds, purples, greens, blues — are interspersed with bold white lines, which resemble chalk or markers on a field.

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International Reviews

Imprinting Nature: Simryn Gill’s Naga Doodles

In the display case next to the skin is a nature-printed image made in Madras in 1857 by Henry Smith. Unlike Gill’s snakes, Smith’s specimen was artfully laid out in an elegant sinuosity, its two surfaces inked to yield a mirror-image pair when passed through a printing press. There is a history behind the contemporary work. Smith was a government printer, who claimed originality to his method of nature-printing (a process that has always been somewhat experimental), but one that was taken up by Hugh Cleghorn who in South India made many simple black prints of plant and tree parts as part of the earliest phase of the conversion of tropical forests into plantations: in his case for coffee and cinchona.

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Review

The Street and the Gallery: Shahidul Alam’s Archives of Practices

In bearing witness to the historical and the everyday, Alam continuously blurs the boundaries between the aesthetic, the political and the personal. Simultaneously, the retrospective showcased Alam’s critique of the Global South’s erasure from the history of photography and how his prominent presence in the “West” is a corrective towards decolonizing photography.

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Review

Between Warp and Weft: On Kallol Datta’s Textile Objects

Datta’s objects carry secrets around knots and folds at the kernel, and point to his practice of cutting patterns in a circular fashion at the formative stage. The circular pattern-cutting registers as an attempt to eliminate the possibility of waste, where the leftover fabric is turned into appendages for the installations.

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Current Issue

current-issue

Sustainability

TAKE Sustainability is centred around well-researched articles and in-depth features that aim to dispel myths, rectify misconceptions, and advocate for collective action. Through actionable steps, the issue empowers individuals to adopt mindful choices that shrink their ecological footprint and positively impact the environment. Additionally, it acts as a platform to showcase success stories and innovative initiatives that offer inspiration, emphasizing the potential for change, even through small actions. It challenges the status quo and encourages critical thinking, fostering a reader base that becomes more aware and engaged. This impact extends beyond the issue, promising a brighter future for generations ahead.

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Inside Sustainability

Editor's Note

Co-Editor's Note

Ahmiyat

Cultural Sustainability: A Just Transition from Ego to Eco and the Way to Craft a Sustainable Future for All

Amplifying Culture, Humanity and Sustainability

Imperfection and Sustainability

Crafting Tomorrow

Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen

Jeanne de Kroon

Huma Adan

Co-Editor's Note- Uthra Rajgopal

The Black Gold Tapestry: An Epic Yarn

Uthra Rajgopal in conversation with Ibrahim Mahama Jute: Unlocking the Grid

Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury

Fluctuating Fortunes - Ladakh and the Production of Pashmina Fibre

Wholesome Utopia of Sustainability: Living and Learning Design Centre, Bhuj

Hidden in Plain Sight

From Mills to Museums: Pioneering South Asian Textile Artists

The Elephant in the Room

A Changing World

Reflection, Perception and Distortion: A Three-Way Guide to Sunil Gawde's It Goes On

Then, Now and Everything In Between: Mapping South Asia through Artistic Explorations in the Popular

The Simultaneous Narrative: Engaging with the multi-narratives of artist Shrimanti Saha

I have a secret to tell...

Apparatus at Play explores Nepalese entangled history through a contemporary lens

Nuanced Expressions

Weaving a World: Kanishka Raja's Ground Control

Nasreen Mohamedi: Singularity and Sociability

Mül Mäthi // from the roots. A Keen Postscript

Eyes in the Sky: Gaze on Afghanistan

Kolikatar Nokshi-Kotha: Tracing a River Beyond its Existence

The Dream of an Idiot

Unmaking Mithu Sen: Of interventions, the now, and the museum

Imprinting Nature: Simryn Gill's Naga Doodles

Dhaka Art Summit: Indigenisation, Social Relations and Beyond

First Feminist Metal Mosaic Sculpture Looms in Lower Manhattan

Engaging Nature, Encountering Space: South Asian Landscape on Display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

A Certain Homecoming

For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit: Encounters with Prison

Unframed: Discovering Image Practices in South Asia

Sudhir Patwardhan: Walking Through Soul City

Paper Trails: Modern Indian Works on Paper from the Gaur Collection

Bhavna Kakar in conversation with Esme Ward and Nusrat Ahmed South Asia Gallery, Manchester Museum: Reimagines Linear South Asian Art History

Kunal Ray in conversation with Atul Dodiya Cinema Has Made Me Think and Rethink What I Know

Manan Shah in conversation with Leticia Marranghello 200 Years and Counting: Brasilia, Art and Architecture

Saloni in conversation with Sandhini Poddar and Sabih Ahmed Rewind and Replay: Exploring the exhibition Notation on Time

Interwoven Threads of Identity: Self-Exploratory Narratives in the Experimenter Curators' Hub 2022

Reflecting on my Residency Process

Fly on the Wall

Vivan Sundaram (1943-2023)

Experiential Narrative Performance - My Cloak Made of Colour, Air and Songs

TAKE Features

Review

Devraj Dakoji – A Force of Nature

Dakoji’s journey of artistic production has been prolific. His training in printmaking under the tutelage of powerful thinkers such as K.G.Subramanyan and Jyoti Bhatt during his stint at M.S. University Baroda in the mid-60s; his post-graduate studies at the Chelsea School of Arts in the mid-70s through a British Council scholarship; and his later presence at the Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque New Mexico U.S.A in the early 90s, all contributed to the immense possibilities he found in the print process. Keen on new experiences, Dakoji found inspiration in travels that took him through England and Europe, as well as across India.

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feature
Review

Looking from an ‘Aesthetic Distance’: Photographing Babasaheb Ambedkar in Vellore

An ambiance of trepidation prevails in most of the Dalit localities of Vellore; thus as an outsider, these statues appear appealing only if seen from an ‘aesthetic distance’, and Marcelo abided by it. Being a foreigner in India, his social identity was not perceived as a threat to the community and he operated from a rather safer zone. His photographs read these sculptures in many layers, forcing the viewers to engage with critical contexts. They often evoke a sense of ambivalence between the ideas of sacred and profane, haptic and the optic. The cage act like a barrier between the viewer and the viewed.

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feature
Interview

200 Years and Counting: Brasilia, Art and Architecture: Manan Shah in conversation with Leticia Marranghello

The museums traditionally have been the representatives of history and human civilisation. Over the course of time, they have evolved to have a multi-disciplinary nature in terms of having an audience-friendly milieu by including a variety of programs and outreach activities. In the said manner, Bihar Museum in Patna has been working towards creating an environment which attracts visitors, providing information with an interactive experience. Bihar Museum, moving beyond the place of traditional knowledge systems, has forged to become a space for cultural exchange, inviting national and international artists, speakers and exhibitions to Patna.

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Review

Unmaking Mithu Sen: Of interventions, the now, and the museum

In the 2023 present of mOTHERTONGUE, this installation serves as an elusive historical example of Sen’s conscious use of reframing and recontextualization. The slippage between 2020 and 2023 is revealed through reference to the fair but also concretised with the October dating of Sen’s statement. The dates of each caption, the curatorial suggests to the visitor, are less relevant than the persistent and singular present of ACCA. Persistent reframing and recontextualization is a mainstay of Sen’s practice and are visible in discrete artworks within the show. Having been curated with the same artistic strategies in mind, mOTHERTONGUE is both a solo exhibition and a single work of art, dated 2023.

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feature
Review

A Changing World

Arpita Singh’s canvases in her solo exhibition Meeting at Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi were awash in shades of blue. In several of her paintings on display, it appeared as if tides carrying flotsam and jetsam had swept over them, generating surfaces swimming with detail. Nowhere was this more evident than in the poignantly titled The swans did not come back this year. Irregular patches of white, oddly reminiscent of corrugated roofs of shanty houses, peppered the waterscape as did a few stretches of brown and lettering in differing colours and sizes. If in the past Singh inserted flora or custard apples to fill in empty spaces in the pictorial plane, then here her flower fetish was strangely absent.

Read More

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