Talks
Restless Line in the Art of Seema Kohli
Join us for a conversation between visual artist Seema Kohli and Arnika Ahldag, MAP’s Head of Curation and Exhibition, as they delve into Kohli’s prolific, four-decade-long artistic journey, documented in her new book, Restless Line in the Art of Seema Kohli.
Through a curated collection of essays and interviews, each piece in the book attempts to trace the complexities and evolution of the artist’s journey. It establishes her need to play and experiment with form and story-building, with references to her paintings, installations, performances, and works in the written word.
Edited by Annapurna Garimella and Sindhura DM, with Anshika Varma as a consultant, Restless Line features essays by eleven art writers, including Adwait Singh, Amruta Patil, Dipanjali Deka, Katie Lazarowicz, Charty Dugdale, Gauri Parimoo Krishnan, Seema Bawa, Vaishnavi Ramanathan, Sona Datta, and Lina Vincent. These essays are organised into four thematic sections: The Body is her Studio, Our Myths Feed her Fantasies, Her Workshop is her Shrine, and In Continuum.
Be a part of this conversation that will offer an immersive glimpse into Seema Kohli’s layered creative world and the compelling insights offered in her richly composed publication.
Bookings
Seema Kohli
Seema Kohli (b. 1960) is an experimental multi-disciplinary artist, straddling the worlds of the visual and performing arts, as well as poetry. Kohli has had over 32 solo shows and over 300 group shows all over the world. She explores the themes of beauty, sensuality and spirituality in her works. Her work is a celebration of the female form and energy as the source of the twin forces of creation and destruction.
Kohli’s artworks are currently in several prestigious collections including the British Museum, Kiran Nadar Museum of Arts (ND, India), Birth Rites Collective (UK), Rubin Museum (USA), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Museum of Sacred Art (Belgium), Lalit Kala Akademi (India) the Kerala Museum of Arts (India), MAP (Bengaluru) to name a few.
Arnika Ahldag
Arnika Ahldag is the Head of Curation and Exhibition at MAP. As an art historian, her interests cover the representation of labour in Indian contemporary art, institutional critique, exhibition histories and archives. She holds a PhD from the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU and an MA from University College in London, UK and Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany. Her curatorial projects include the public programme for IAF 2020 and Mapping Gender: Bodies and Sexualities in the Global South at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
She co-founded the Feminist Syllabus, which is part of the workshop series Pact of Silence, How to break it, a programme for intersectional feminist discourses in the arts. Over the past years, she lectured at the National School of Drama and OP Jindal Global University in New Delhi.
