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Review

The Propitious Garden of Rekha Rodwittiya

“We are meant to survive… beyond our stories " was a selected overview which showcased the Godrej collection of Rekha Rodwittiya’ work of four decades. After completing her Bachelor studies from Baroda she was the first recipient in the field of fine arts of the prestigious Inlaks scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, London. Upon her return to India Rekha claimed a space for her unequivocally feminist ideology and established herself as an important and powerful voice that questioned the status quo of the art establishment and carved a niche for herself in less than a decade from the start of her career in 1985. “We are meant to survive…” covered the whole gamut of her oeuvre from her student days in Baroda and RCA to her latest offerings from the 2020s. One might be tempted to call the show a mini retrospective although not designated as such officially.

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Review

Pratul Dash creates an archaeology of the land and the mind

The recent body of work, which was displayed in the solo ‘A Bend in the River’, stands as a testament to Pratul Dash’s ongoing effort to draw connections between ecology and the human mind. Pratul Dash’s works read like manuscripts. Every part of the canvas tells you its own story, only to come together in one cohesive narrative when viewed as a whole. You keep coming back to the works, even the smaller ones, to discover something new that the artist is trying to tell you. What is the truth?

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Review

THE REBEL AND THE RECLUSE: GOBARDHAN ASH (1929-1969)

Navigating through the gallery space of the Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC), Kolkata, was overwhelming for visitors as around 100 odd artworks of Gobardhan Ash (1907-1996) emerged slowly as visceral experiences around them. The Gobardhan Ash Retrospective Exhibition (1929-1969), archived and documented by Princeps, curated by Brijeswari Kumari Gohil and Harsharan Baksh and housed by the KCC, displayed Ash’s artworks that came out of the most creative four decades of the artist’s life. The artworks were supported by a well-organised timeline (across an entire wall) to help the viewer understand Ash’s growth as an art practitioner as he journeyed across forms, locales and institutions.

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Review

A Primordial Roar

‘Can You Hear Me?’ is a triggered, and triggering, response to a shocking incident of recent history. It drives Nalini Malani’s narrative into an animation where the central protagonist is an 8-year-old girl, whose soul eventually metamorphoses into that of a bird. The show is composed of a sprawling nine- channel video installation, featuring over 88 iPad- drawn animations created between 2018 and 2020, reorganized into a form of an ‘Animation Chamber’. It refers to this poor child’s violent assault and eventual murder by seven men, inflaming already stretched age-old religious tensions and sparking a debate on communal hatred that became a national and international news story, that unfortunately continues to gain notoriety due to shockingly similar and regular reoccurrences. The imagery is loose, and the text is interlaced and juxtaposed, its treatment is playful yet compelling, hiding its dissolute and bleak reality in light-hearted colour changes and buoyant edits.

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Current Issue

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Philanthropy

In the contemporary world, art philanthropy transcends borders, connecting cultures, empowering communities, and advancing dialogue on pressing societal issues. TAKE Philanthropy serves as a documentation of the evolving landscape of art philanthropy in a globalised context, examining its impact on artistic innovation, cultural diplomacy, and community development. This issue is my way of giving back to the art community that thrives and survives despite changing societal dynamics and global challenges. By investing in cross-cultural exchange, community empowerment, and cultural diplomacy, philanthropists leverage the power of art to bridge divides, nurture empathy, and inspire collective action for a more inclusive future.

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Inside Philanthropy

A Life in Art

From the Intersection of Arts, Education and Philanthropy

Acts of Sharing Art

Philanthropy: Every Idea is a Seed in Time

Conservation of India’s Glorious Cultural Heritage

Of Lineage and Art Philanthropy

Taking a Legacy Forward: The Baroda Model

Collection and Consumption of Arts

Art Institutions, Creative Collaboration and Philanthropy

Building Art into the Everyday

Philanthropy in the Art Market

Indian Textile through the lens of Private Patronage and Philanthropy

Philanthropy in the Arts In India: A Personal Experience

Contending for Sustained Philanthropy with the case of Art Ichol

Indian Photography and Philanthropy

Where Nature and Nurture Conjoin

A Collector’s Eye (and Mind): Exploring the influence of Chester and Davida Herwitz in the making of Modern Indian Art

Artist Residencies: The Purest Form of Philanthropy

20 years of 1Shanthiroad

Pratul Dash Creates an Archaeology of the Land and the Mind

Down Memory Lane

The Body Continues

Riding a Caravan

A Peek into Krishna Reddy’s World: Of Friendships and an Early Celebration of the Master Artist’s Centenary in 2025

The Propitious Garden of Rekha Rodwittiya

The Rebel and the Recluse: Gobardhan Ash (1929-1969)

Fragmented Humanity: Arindam Chatterjee’s Grotesque Mirror to Our Times

A Primordial Roar

Weaving Imperialism and Divinity: Mughal Carpets and Painting Exhibition in the Cleveland Museum

Restless Line in the Art of Seema Kohli

Citizen Gallery: The Gandhys of Chemould and the Birth of Modern Art in Bombay

Kolkata City Lab: City as an Archive Open to the Field of Experiments

Serendipity Arts Festival: Through the Lens of Visual Arts

Carrying Silences and Serendipity: Art Writer’s Lens on the Residency

The Act of Giving

A. Ramachandran

TAKE Features

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Essay

Philanthropy: Every Idea is a Seed in Time

Hope, funding, a dignity of livelihood and mentorship are core values for me and The Gujral Foundation, where we support the growth of intent and the future of ideas. My happy quotient lies in the expansion of giving and watching these idea seeds grow into much larger projects and careers. For instance, ‘Artdemic’: It was a project that began during the pandemic with a very small open call to fund young artists. We started with two to three micro grants per week and three years in, we continue to fund artists every month and are now looking to establish Artdemic as a much larger platform that really nourishes young artists’ futures in a very competitive and fast-growing art world. 

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Essay

A Life in Art

The inherent internationalism with which Godrej imbued Cymroza insured its cultural relevance and allowed for young artistic talent to gain attention. Over time, she built up an impressive roster of artists who would exhibit regularly at the gallery: artists such as Rekha Rodwittya, Madhvi Subramanian, KG Subramanyan, Jai Zharotia, Haku Shah, Arpana Caur, and Akbar Padamsee. As Godrej makes clear, “we also paid attention that all this work was documented through our annual catalogues that encouraged contributions from art critics as well as art historians, that were then distributed to a wide community of visitors, collectors and art admirers.” Beyond the visual arts, she was equally committed to design practices, foregrounding crafts techniques from around the country.

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Report

KOLKATA CITY LAB: City as an Archive Open to the Field of Experiments

In recent times, the discipline of arts and art institutions has been working to address the lack of critical spaces for discourse and deliberation. When a city like Kolkata, with its deep, penetrating roots—nurturing a dense forest of diverse artistic and aesthetic voices—is considered, how can one overlook its presence in the contemporary art-making scene? KAEE Kolkata City Lab (KKCL) by KAEE Contemporary in Kolkata, established by Ambica Beri, is one such promising residency programme, conceived and curated by Premjish Achari. The residency excavates the multiple layers of Kolkata to explore both the tangible and intangible salient features of the city. Curators, writers, architects, designers, and scientists have collaborated to investigate the city’s cultural heritage.

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Review

A Transformative River and Embedded Dialectics: Reflections on a river of unrest …a delta of dreams by Paula Sengupta

In many ways, Sengupta’s project is situated between “a river of unrest” and “a delta of dreams.” It is the silent space that occupies the void between evidences, oral narratives, sensory experiences, memory and creative reconstructions. Calcutta and its colonial history have been addressed in her art projects the last two decades offering an unique perspective to assess and apprecitate the city’s entanglement of past and the present. In this recent project, Matiaburj (in which mati indicates clay/mud, and burj implies tower) in south west of Calcutta by the river remains a key site where authoritarian and local histories juxtapose, where fiction-like facts makes way for Sengupta’s ambitious creative reimaginations. With a mindful selection of historically informed materials, that include inherited and constructed textiles, jute fibre, paper pulp and graphic prints, archival history is brought in a dialogue with sensorial experiences.

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Interview

Acts of Sharing Art: Conversation with Kiran Nadar

An interview with Kiran Nadar Chairperson, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and Trustee, Shiv Nadar Foundation. Nadar has profoundly shaped and inspired the Indian art world, becoming a pivotal force in the country's cultural landscape, with an influential vision that has increased the visibility of Indian modern and contemporary art worldwide. Nadar is on the cusp of setting up the third art museum near the International Airport in the Capital designed by Adjaye Associates. This comes after an inclusive space at Saket Select City Walk which is still one of the most visited museums in the country with a healthy footfall, interactive AI projects and a solid collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. After premiering an AI project at the Venice Biennale featuring the maverick M F Husain, Nadar tells us that one must pay attention to the fine print of working with AI and keep sight of the larger picture. She is excited about the upcoming shows, the India Art Fair and several outreach art programmes and activities designed for children and adults. Georgina Maddox caught up with Kiran Nadar and discussed being one of India’s premium Art Philanthropists; with her, outlining its joys, challenges and plans for the future.

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