Arpita Singh
Episode 1 features Arpita Singh, one of India’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Singh is acclaimed for her dreamlike compositions that convey a personal perspective on modern life.
Women That Changed The (Art) World was released in March 2022, in keeping with Women's History Month. This season introduces the viewer to eight modern and contemporary women artists from India. The episodes of Women That Changed The (Art) World are curated to take the viewer on a journey across genres, mediums and time. Episodes in the season feature Arpita Singh, Annu Matthew, Bhuri Bai, Reena Saini Kallat, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Baua Devi, Shilpa Gupta and Meera Mukherjee.
Episodes
Annu Matthew
Episode 2 features Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, a photographer, and Professor of Art (Photography) at the University of Rhode Island. Matthew’s photo-based artworks explore ‘re-looking’ at cultural histories, identity, and memory.
Bhuri Bai
Episode 3 features Bhuri Bai, the first female artist from the Bhil community to paint on paper. Bhuri Bai’s paintings are characterised by their lively visual vocabulary driven by an autobiographical and archival impulse, as she draws from her encounters with flora and fauna in the forests surrounding her village, motifs from traditional tattoos and her later experiences and travels as a contemporary artist.
Shilpa Gupta
Episode 4 features Shilpa Gupta, a conceptual artist from India whose art is about identity, power structures and the current world order. Through multimedia installations, Gupta seeks to shift the primary status of art from object-based commodity to participatory experience which actively involves the audience.
Meera Mukherjee
Episode 5 features Meera Mukherjee who was one of India’s most prominent sculptors. Mukherjee was inspired by the everyday, and worked with traditional craftsmen across the country. Mukherjee’s practice was deeply influenced by the techniques particular to the Dhokra sculptors of the Bastar region in Chhattisgarh, who use the traditional lost wax process.
Baua Devi
Episode 6 features Baua Devi who is a Madhubani artist from Bihar. Till the 1930s, the world had never seen a Madhubani painting. Baua Devi was one of the pioneering artists to transfer her mud paintings onto paper, and into the marketplace.
Reena Saini Kallat
Episode 7 features Reena Saini Kallat who is a Mumbai-based visual artist. Kallat’s practice, spanning drawing, photography, sculpture and video, engages diverse materials and is concerned with themes of political and social tension, identity, and memory.
Mrinalini Mukherjee
Episode 8 features Mrinalini Mukherjee who was known for her distinctly contemporary style and use of dyed and woven hemp fiber. She began creating wall-hangings which developed, over the course of thirty years, to elaborate sculptures.