Nandita Kumar | |
|---|---|
 Kumar in 2017 | |
| Born | 1981 (age 41–42) |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Education | Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Elam School of Fine Arts California Institute of the Arts |
| Movement | New media art |
| Website | nanditakumar |
Nandita Kumar (born 1981) is a New Zealand new media artist. Her artwork often explores climate change, contradictions between natural and industrial landscapes, and personal identities and makes use of technological and interactive elements.
Nandita Kumar was born in 1981 in Pamplemousses, Mauritius. [1] [2] She grew up in different locations in India, never staying in the same place for long. [3] Kumar was interested in art from an early age. In her youth, her father introduced her to the work of Malcolm de Chazal, and they sat and painted together. [4] Kumar's family migrated from India to New Zealand. [3]
Kumar initially worked as a programmer before pursuing a career in art. [5] She holds Bachelors of Fine Arts from both the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India and the Elam School of Fine Arts of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. [1] [2] From 2006 to 2009 she studied at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in the United States, [6] from which she holds a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Animation and Filmmaking. [1] [2] [6]
Kumar alternates between being based in Auckland, New Zealand and in Mumbai [7] [8] or Goa, India. [2] [9]
Kumar's artwork is often focused on climate change, [5] contradictions between natural and industrial landscapes [2] and personal identities. [10] Her installations combine art with technology, environmental science and interactive elements to make information on climate change accessible. Technological elements that have been used in her art includes motherboards, smartphone apps, sound, animation, video, and microwave and solar sensors. [5] [11] In addition to complex art installations, Kumar also creates animations, paintings, and interactive sculptures, integrating different media techniques and technologies. [2]
Kumar's work has been displayed at film festivals and art exhibitions worldwide. [1] [2] [12] In 2009, Kumar curated the experimental film section of the festival SPIEL09 in Austria. [8] She had her first own art exhibition in 2010, Let the Brain Fly, which included 25 works all related to "travelling along the nodes of a brain". [10] In 2011–2012, Kumar curated the community art project Ghar Pe/At Home in Hong Kong. [12] Her artwork has been featured in group exhibitions such as Exo-Evolution at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe in 2015, ARS17: Hello world! at Kiasma in Helsinki in 2017, and Delirium/Equilibrium at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi in 2018. [13] She was one of the artists exhibiting work at the India Art Fair in New Delhi in 2015. Kumar's art piece at the fair, a machine that mimicked the handwriting of visitors, garnered much attention. [14]
Kumar has spoken at TEDx and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. [2] [12]
Kumar's short film Birth of a Brain Fly won an award for "Best Original Music" at the 2008 Cinema Mundo festival in Brazil. [2] The film was also included on the "Best of Sydney Underground" DVD released after the 2009 Sydney Underground Film Festival. [12] In 2014, Kumar was a nominee for a New Technological Art Award (NTAA), [15] the first person from India to be nominated for the award. [16] In 2022, she was among nineteen "outstanding practitioners in the fields of visual arts, film, literature, and music" selected as a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. [17] Kumar was among numerous "ecologically conscious" contemporary artists highlighted by art critics Maja and Reuben Fowkes in their 2022 book Art and Climate Change. [18]
Nandita Das is an Indian actress and film maker. She has acted in over 40 feature films in ten different languages. Das appeared in the films Fire (1996), Earth (1998), Bawandar (2000), Kannathil Muthamittal (2002), Azhagi (2002),Kamli (2006), and Before The Rains (2007). Her directorial debut Firaaq (2008), premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and travelled to more than 50 festivals, winning more than 20 awards. Her second film as a director was Manto (2018). Based on the life of 20th Century Indo-Pakistani short story writer Sadat Hasan Manto, the film was screened at Cannes Film Festival in the "Un Certain Regard" section. In September 2019, Das produced a two-minute Public Service Announcement music video India's Got Colour. The music video is about the issue of colourism and urges the audience to celebrate India's diversity of skin colour. Her first book, 'Manto & I', chronicles her 6-year long journey of making the film. She wrote, directed, produced and acted in a short film called, Listen to Her, that sheds light on the increase in domestic violence and overburden of work that women have been facing during the lockdown. Also sought petition seeking the commutation of the death sentence handed out to Ajmal Kasab.
Nancy Adajania is am Indian cultural theorist, art critic and independent curator.
Ganesh Pyne was an Indian painter and draughtsman, born in Kolkata, West Bengal. Pyne is one of the most notable contemporary artists of the Bengal School of Art, who had also developed his own style of "poetic surrealism", fantasy and dark imagery, around the themes of Bengali folklore and mythology.
Jogen Chowdhury is an eminent Indian painter and considered an important painter of 21st century India. He lives and works in Santiniketan. He graduated from the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata and subsequently at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1967. He has immense contribution in inspiring young artists of India. Jogen Chowdhury had developed his individual style after his return from Paris. His most famous paintings are in ink, water colour and pastel. He has painted in oil medium as well.
Jatin Das is an Indian painter, sculptor and muralist. He is counted amongst the most contemporary artists of India.
Dhvani Desai is an Indian animation filmmaker, curator and poet. She is best known for her artistic animated films Manpasand and Chakravyuh.
Geeta Kapur is a noted Indian art critic, art historian and curator based in New Delhi. She was one of the pioneers of critical art writing in India, and who, as Indian Express noted, has "dominated the field of Indian contemporary art theory for three decades now". Her writings include artists' monographs, exhibition catalogues, books, and sets of widely anthologized essays on art, film, and cultural theory.
Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar was an Indian painter and art educator. He is well known for his paintings that captured the social life of the common people in India. Inspired by traditional Indian art, he combined the Western art techniques with his paintings to create a unique style of his own. Painting for Hebbar was about being true to the original self and this is what he tried to achieve in his works. In addition to his paintings, he is also known for his rhythmic line drawings and illustrations.
Ritu Sarin is an Indian film director, producer and artist based in Dharamshala, India. She is the director of the Dharamshala International Film Festival.
e-flux is a publishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and e-mail service founded in 1998. The arts news digests, events, exhibitions, schools, journal, books, and art projects produced and/or disseminated by e-flux describe strains of critical discourse surrounding contemporary art, culture, and theory internationally. Its monthly publication, e-flux journal, has produced essays commissioned since 2008 about cultural, political, and structural paradigms that inform contemporary artistic production.
Nalini Malani is a contemporary Indian artist widely acknowledged to be among the country's first generation of video artists. She works with several mediums which include theater, videos, installations along with mixed media paintings and drawings. The subjects of her creations are deeply influenced by her experience of migration in the aftermath of the partition of India. Subsequently, pressing feminist issues have also become a part of her creative output. Malani has evolved a visual language that is iconic, moving from stop motion, erasure animations, reverse paintings and most recently to digital animations, where she draws directly with her finger onto a tablet.
Shubhavi Arya is an Indian animator and film director.
Bani Abidi is a Pakistani artist working with video, photography and drawing. She studied visual arts at the National College of Arts in Lahore and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2011, she was invited for the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program, and since then has been residing in Berlin.
Charuvi Agrawal is an Indian painter, sculptor, animator, filmmaker, and visual artist. She graduated from Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Canada, and is a gold medalist in fine arts from the College of Art, University of Delhi.
Manjot Kaur is a contemporary Indian artist, who lives and works in Chandigarh. She is currently a Visiting Artist Fellow at The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Amy Howden-Chapman is a New Zealand artist and writer based in the United States. Her works are held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Alex Monteith is a new media artist and academic, born in Northern Ireland and resident in New Zealand. She is also a competitive surfer and has won national titles in the sport.
Sangeeta Gupta, a retired Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, is an Indian abstract artist, poet and filmmaker. She is the first woman who qualified Civil Services from her district in Uttar Pradesh, India. She is an officer of 1984 batch IRS. Her artistic journey so far consist of 35 solo exhibitions of paintings, 25 published books including Fourteen anthologies of poems in Hindi and six in English. From her collection of poems, 10 books are translated into German, Greek, Mandarin, English, Bangla, Dogri, Tamil and Urdu. She has also directed, scripted and shot 30 documentary films, 6 of which are in the collection of Library of Congress, US. Song of the Cosmos is her creative biography.
DevyaniKrishna was an Indian painter, print-maker and a teacher. She was also involved in research work about Indian toys, folk motifs and batik work. Devyani was regarded as 'India's foremost woman artist' of the day by the art critic Richard Bartholomew for her diverse body of works that she showcased in India and Europe.