Amar Kanwar | |
|---|---|
 Amar Kanwar in 2012 | |
| Born | 1964 (age 59–60) New Delhi, India |
| Alma mater |
|
| Occupation | Filmmaker |
Amar Kanwar (born 1964) is an Indian filmmaker. His work challenges the limits of the medium in order to create complex narratives traversing several terrains such as labour and indigenous rights, gender, religious fundamentalism and ecology.
Kanwar was born in New Delhi in 1964 where he continues to live and work as a filmmaker. Kanwar studied at the Department of History, Ramjas College, Delhi University (1982-1985), and at the Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi (1985–87). After making a few films, Kanwar joined the People's Science Institute in 1988 as a researcher on occupational health and safety in the coal-mining belt of Madhya Pradesh in central India. He returned to filmmaking in 1990, and his films were then shown primarily in public campaigns, community spaces and film festivals in India and across the world. In 2002, Kanwar was invited to exhibit at Documenta 11 in Kassel whereupon his work has also been presented in several art exhibitions and museums. Connecting with diverse audiences, in multiple public spaces, Kanwar also participated in the next three editions of the Documenta exhibition in 2007, 2012 and 2017. He has been an eminent voice in film and art for the past two decades. [1] Kanwar was one of the three curators for Istanbul Biennial 2021. [2]
His key works have been A Season Outside, a reflective essay on violence; A Night of Prophecy on the poetry of resistance; the multiple projection installations The Lightning Testimonies about sexual violence in public conflicts; and The Torn First Pages on the Burmese democracy movement. Kanwar's recent work, The Sovereign Forest (2012 – ongoing) is a profound interrogation of the politics of violence and justice. Initiating a creative response to our understanding of crime, human rights, and ecology, it engages viewers in manifold ways of seeing and comprehending as it presents a set of propositions that investigates the notion of "poetry as evidence"; [3] and Such a Morning, a modern parable about two people’s quiet engagement with truth.
In 2018, Kanwar was part of the selection committee that nominated Ruangrupa as artistic director of Documenta fifteen. [4]
Kanwar addresses the overtaking and destruction of indigenous land in his most extensive mixed media installation "The Sovereign Forest," including films, projections on handmade books, seeds, and photographs. He tells the story from the perspective of farmers, fishermen, citizens, and victims of violence: what did they lose with the land during the industrial and governmental overtaking of Odisha, India? In one section of his installation, he arranges 272 varieties of indigenous rice seeds, collected and preserved by a local farmer of Odisha. Kanwar acknowledges that the agriculture on the land was not used just for survival, but that the seeds had different personalities, flavors, meanings to the farmers and people who lived there. He writes: "Farmers have always named their seeds. They have people names. Often of loved ones. Like children." [5] Kanwar highlights the landscape of Odisha just before it began to be erased, showing the beauty and value of what was unjustly taken away.
Kanwar has received several awards for his work as a filmmaker and artist, including the IHME Helsinki Commission (2022); [6] Prince Claus Award (2017); Golden Gate at the San Francisco Film Festival (1999); the Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art, Norway (2005); [7] and Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change (2014). [8] Other awards have been Best Public Service Short Film at Vatavaran International Environment Film Festival, New Delhi (2012); Best Film Award at One Billion Eyes Film Festival, Chennai (2011); Jury Special Mention at One Billion Eyes Film Festival, Chennai (2009); Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, USA (2006); Certificate of Merit at San Francisco International Film Festival, California, USA (2002); Golden Tree Award at Vatavaran, National Environment & Wildlife Film Festival, New Delhi (2002); The Grand Prix, EnviroFilm, Slovak Republic (2002); National Jury Award at Mumbai International Film Festival, India (2002); The First Prize at Torino International Environment Film Festival, Italy (2002); Jury's Award at Film South Asia, Kathmandu, Nepal (2001); MacArthur Fellowship, India (2000); Golden Orange Award at 36th Antalya International Film Festival, Turkey (1999) and the Golden Conch Award at Mumbai International Film Festival, India (1998).
Recent solo exhibitions of Kanwar's work have been held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2022); Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2020); NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi (2020); Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2019); Tate Modern, London (2018); Bildmuseet, Umea University, Sweden (2017 - 2018); [9] Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai (2016) [10] and at the Assam State Museum in collaboration with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and North East Network, India (2015). [11] In 2013 and 2014 at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; [12] the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, U.K.; [13] Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA 21), Vienna, Austria [14] and at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2012). [15]
Recent group exhibitions have been presented at Castello Di Rivoli, Turin (2022); Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); The Garden Sees, Megaron, Athens (2017); #Resist, Goethe-Gallery & Black Box Studio, Hong Kong (2017); the Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou (2016); the Devi Art Foundation with Salima Hashmi, New Delhi (2016); MDE'15, Colombia (2015); [16] Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, USA (2014); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India (2014); 56th Carnegie International, USA (2013); [17] Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2013 and 2012); [18] 13th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2013); [19] 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia (2013); [20] 11th and 15th Sharjah Biennale, UAE (2013, 2023); [21] [22] 1st Kochi Biennale, India (2013); [23] Tarra Warra Museum of Art, Victoria, Australia (2013) [24] and the Bristol Museum, U.K. (2013). [25] Kanwar has also participated in Documenta 11, 12 and 13 in Kassel, Germany (2002, 2007, 2012). [26]
Other solo exhibitions have been at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008); [27] Haus der Kundst, Munich, Germany (2008); [28] the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, U.K. (2007); [29] the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway (2006) and the Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA (2004). [30]
Retrospectives of his films have been held at film festivals including the 5th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, Kerala State (2012); the 13th Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival (2011); the Documentary Dream Show, Tokyo (2010); the Parallel Perspectives Film Festival, Hyderabad (2008); and the 9th International Short Film Festival, Bangladesh (2005).
In the art world, a Biennale, Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition. The term was popularised by the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895, but the concept of such a large scale, and intentionally international event goes back to at least the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.
Kutluğ Ataman is an acclaimed Turkish-American contemporary artist and feature filmmaker. Ataman's films are known for their strong characterization and humanity. His early art works examine the ways in which people and communities create and rewrite their identities through self-expression, blurring the line between reality and fiction. His later works focus on history and geography as man-made constructs. He won the Carnegie Prize for his works Kuba in 2004. In the same year he was nominated for Turner Prize for his work Twelve.
Hito Steyerl is a German filmmaker, moving image artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary. Her principal topics of interest are media, technology, and the global circulation of images. Steyerl holds a PhD in philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is currently a professor of New Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she co-founded the Research Center for Proxy Politics, together with Vera Tollmann and Boaz Levin.
Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist and independent curator. He has been honoured by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation. In 2022, Hoskote received the 7th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry.
White Crane Films is an independent film production company founded in 1990 in London by filmmakers, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. Focusing primarily on Tibet-related subjects, its productions include, The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche (1991), The Trials of Telo Rinpoche (1993), A Stranger in My Native Land (1998), The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet (1998), the Tibetan feature film, Dreaming Lhasa (2005), and The Thread of Karma (2007).
Dayanita Singh is an Indian photographer whose primary format is the book. She has published fourteen books.
Walid Raad (Ra'ad) (Arabic: وليد رعد) (born 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon) is a contemporary media artist. The Atlas Group is a fictional collective, the work of which is produced by Walid Raad. He lives and works in New York, where he is currently a distinguished visiting professor of photography at Bard College, in addition to being a professor of photography at the Cooper Union School of Art.
Reena Saini Kallat is an Indian visual artist. She currently lives and works in Mumbai.
Dani Gal is an artist and a filmmaker, born 1975 in Jerusalem, lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Mahirwan Mamtani is painter, graphic and multimedia artist.
Anton Vidokle is an artist and founder of e-flux. Born 1965, Vidokle lives in New York and Berlin.
Akram Zaatari is a filmmaker, photographer, archival artist and curator. In 1997, he co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with photographers Fouad Elkoury, and Samer Mohdad. His work is largely based on collecting, studying and archiving the photographic history of the Arab World.
IHME Contemporary Art Festival, since year 2019 known as IHME Helsinki is a contemporary art organization maintained by Pro Arte Foundation Finland, and supported by Kone Foundation, Saastamoinen Foundation and Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation. Between years 2009 and 2018 the festival included a public work of art, a varied programme of events around the artwork, and educational art projects. IHME Project, commissioned by the Festival, was realised in the public realm. A varied Festival programme ranging from artist talks to film screenings opened the IHME Project for discussion and debate and was free to attend. IHME also offered an art education programme, IHME School, with various activities. The word "ihme" means a wonder or a miracle in Finnish.
Julian Charrière is a French-Swiss conceptual artist currently living and working in Berlin. He utilises a wide range of artistic approaches including photography, performance, sculpture, and video to address concepts relating to time and human's relationship to the natural world.
Sheela Gowda is a contemporary artist living and working in Bangalore. Gowda studied painting at Ken School of Art, Bangalore, India (1979) pursued a postgraduate diploma at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India (1982), and a MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 1986. Trained as a painter Gowda expanded her practice into sculpture and installation employing a diversity of material like human hair, cow-dung, incense and kumkuma powder. She is known for her 'process-orientated' work, often inspired by the everyday labor experiences of marginalized people in India. Her work is associated with postminimalism drawing from ritualistic associations. Her early oils with pensive girls in nature were influenced by her mentor K. G. Subramanyan, and later ones by Nalini Malani towards a somewhat expressionistic direction depicting a middle class chaos and tensions underplayed by coarse eroticism. She is the recipient of the 2019 Maria Lassnig Prize.
Firoz Mahmud is a Bangladeshi visual artist based in Japan. He was the first Bangladeshi fellow artist in research at Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Mahmud's work has been exhibited at the following biennales: Sharjah Biennale, the first Bangkok Art Biennale, at the Dhaka Art Summit, Setouchi Triennale (BDP), the first Aichi Triennial, the Congo Biennale, the first Lahore Biennale, the Cairo Biennale, the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, and the Asian Biennale.
Cevdet Erek is a Turkish visual artist and musician living and working in Istanbul, Turkey. He is known for combining sound, rhythm and architecture to create installations, videos, objects and performances characterized by site specificity. Cevdet Erek was the recipient of the Nam Jun Paik Award in 2012 and represented Turkey at the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia in 2017.
Chus Martínez is a Spanish curator, art historian, and writer. She is currently the director of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, where she also runs the Institute’s exhibition space Der Tank. Additionally, Martínez is the artistic director of Ocean Space, Venice, a space spearheaded by TBA21–Academy that promotes ocean literacy, research, and advocacy through the arts. In 2017, Martínez was curator of KölnSkulptur #9. She sits on the advisory boards of numerous international art institutions, including Castello di Rivoli, Turin; De Appel, Amsterdam; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; and Museum der Moderne, Salzburg.
Stefanie Hessler is a German-born contemporary art curator, an art writer, and the current director of Swiss Institute in New York. From 2019 to 2022 she was the director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway.
Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu is a Mongolian artist. As a "contemporary master of Mongol Zurag", she incorporates traditional patterns and Buddhist motifs in her paintings and draws on experiences of Mongolian women and the everyday lives of post-nomadic Mongolia.
http://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/amar-kanwar-5058699/
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
