National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, Ministry of Culture, Government of India and Avid Learning present Meme Art and Art Engagement in the Post-Internet World as the debut episode of AVID’s brand new Art Series Art Redefined Today (A.R.T) 2020. 

Read more about the Series below: 

This series will reenergise conversations around Art and the future of Art by engaging with emerging issues and trends. with this series within the context of the NGMA and its milieu but also focus on taking the conversation beyond the space into the stratosphere of Indian contemporary art of tomorrow.  

This four-part series will touch upon topics like Meme Art and the Future of Art Engagement, Redefining Traditional Art in today’s world, Identity and Body politics in 2020 and the shifting definitions of what conceptual art has come to mean and encompass in the digital age.  

The description of the discussion is as below: 

We are all familiar with memes that broke the internet like the “Philosoraptor”, the “Kiki” and “Ice Bucket” Challenges, “Doge” “Shirtless Putin” and “Duckface”, “Gangnam Style”, “Keep Calm…”, “Dancing Baby” etc. 

In a post-Internet world, social media is the new playground for art where the registers of consumption and originality are exploded and redefined. Memes are emerging as a humorous way to leverage Art historical images to educate, comment and shape/change cultural commentary.  

Over 100 years after artist Marcel Duchamp created a cheeky rendition of the Mona Lisa on a cheap postcard (L.H.O.O.K, 1919) where he drew a moustache and goatee on her face adding witty wordplay- and conceptual art as we know it was born- the impulse to combine and layer humour, social commentary and politics with visual art and popular culture is still going strong and has found its latest avatar in Meme Art. The concept itself derives from the French word même meaning “same” or “alike”. 

Memes are not pure visual objects. Memes and Meme Art owe a great deal to fine art and the art-historical canon and are arguably the digital descendants of Dadaism, Pop Art, anti-consumerist performance art, graffiti etc.- and has today to become a genre all its own- one that has attitude and aesthetic.  

Independent Arts Manager, Exhibition Consultant, & creator of #ArtWorldMemes Abhinit Khanna, Content Creator (@deepfriedneurons), Curator of Meme Regime at TIFA Working Studios Anuj Nakade and Social Media Commentator @otherwarya and Former Editor at Elle Aishwarya Subramanyam will be in conversation with Visual Artist and Book-Maker Kaamna Patel. 

These speakers will unpack the meme phenomenon that has captured the imagination of an entire generation of future stakeholders for the arts. 

WHERE: The National Gallery of Modern Art, Sir Cowasji Jahangir Public Hall, M. G. Road, Fort, Mumbai, 400032 

WHEN: Wednesday, 18th March 2020 | 6:00 PM – 6:30 PM – Registrations | 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Discussion 

About the Speakers

Abhinit Khanna is an arts manager based in Bombay, India. He has over 9 years of work experience in the visual arts, design and creative business development. He has worked with award winning independent magazine Motherland published by Wieden + Kennedy and consulted GVK for their iconic Mumbai International Airport’s T2 Art Programme – Jaya He! His recent consulting projects include Lodha Luxury Group where he was responsible for exhibition design, arts management and launch event for #LodhaxPicasso. He has micro-consulted Cultivate Art - a brand new arts platform for emerging artists and young collectors. He was listed in Verve Magazine's Art Issue as 40 young creatives to look out for in 2018. In April 2019, Abhinit was awarded the prestigious fellowship for his outstanding work as an arts manager and creative leader in South Asia by Art Think South Asia. In October 2019, Abhinit was awarded Young Cultural Innovator Fellowship at Salzburg Global Seminar. 

Anuj Nakade is a resident meme snob at TIFA Working Studios and also curated the infamous Meme Regime that travelled with the show to Mumbai, Bangalore, Mysore and Goa. He holds a BA honours in psychology from Symbiosis College and is on his way to getting an LLB. He performed as an actor with a theatre Group "The Drama Queens" and also and flirts with the idea of standup. He hosts a podcast by the name “Deep Fried Neurons” which he started in 2018 to deal with meaninglessness in life and curiosity about events in human history. He also does video essays about memes on his channel for information to randomly exist in the space of the internet. 

The deputy editor of Vogue India for four years, Aishwarya Subramanyam took over Elle India in 2013 and has since established the 1996 publication as a leading player in India’s growing fashion industry, as well as a platform to discuss topics concerning modern Indian women, including gender, feminism and sexuality. Subramanyam attended University of East Anglia in the UK, where she received a master’s in Film, Cinema and Video studies. Before joining Vogue in 2008, she wrote for the travel and lifestyle magazine, India Today Travel Plus. Every month, Subramanyam is the first to reveal the magazine’s new cover, via her Instagram account, with recent cover stars including Bollywood’s biggest actresses, Indian models and emerging players in Indian fashion, such as Pernia Qureshi. Ogaan Publications, which publishes Elle and Elle Décor in India, was reorganised and rebranded as Ogaan Media. As part of the move, which aimed to improve user experience and bring the publications’ print and digital channels closer together, Subramanyam was appointed as fashion & beauty content chief. In 2017, Subramanyam ended her four-year tenure as chief. To start her own content company.  

Kaamna Patel is a visual artist currently based between Mumbai, India & Paris, France. Born in Mumbai, Kaamna studied English Literature in her home city before receiving a scholarship to study photography at Paris College of Art, for whom she is currently the ambassador in Asia. Her publishing imprint JOJO was born in 2019 with the title ‘In Today’s News: Alpha Males and Women Power’, and is dedicated to exploring new perspectives, process and playfulness through images and the book object. 

About Partners

The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) Mumbai, Ministry of Culture, Government of India  is a repository of the cultural ethos of the country and showcases the changing art forms through the passage of the last 160 years starting from about 1857 in the field of Visual and Plastic arts. The first NGMA was opened in New Delhi at the historic Jaipur House, in the presence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and artists and art lovers on March 29, 1954. The National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai was opened to the public in 1996. It hosts various exhibitions and also has its own art collections comprising paintings, sculptures and graphics with a focus on Indian and International artists. It is located in the precinct of the former auditorium the Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall and the Institute of Science. This architecturally marvellous building was designed and built by the famous British architect George Wittet which has been completely redesigned keeping only the facade edifice that was Public Hall. It has hosted eminent artists like, K.H. Ara, F. N. Souza, Gaitonde, S.H. Raza and M.F. Hussain and contemporary artists like, K.G. Subramanyam, Sudhir Patwardhan, Nalini Malini, Atul Dodiya and Sudarshan Shetty. The NGMA in Mumbai is run and administered as a subordinate office to the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, which has two branches one at Mumbai and the other at Bengaluru.  

Avid Learning,  the cultural philanthropy arm of the Essar Group founded in 2009 has, over the past decade, grown into one of Mumbai’s leading public programming platforms and is firmly entrenched in the country’s wider cultural ecosystem. Over the years, AVID has gained a reputation for curating thought provoking, innovative and path-breaking content that is intellectually and creatively stimulating and engages with a variety of topical subjects and trends. Our thoughtfully curated and diverse events embrace the spirit of collaboration to bring together the best of Indian and international writers, artists, intellectuals, cultural experts, policymakers and industry leaders across Visual Art, Literature, Culture and Heritage, Education, Design & Technology and the Performing Arts through engaging and dynamic formats like panel discussions, workshops & master classes, roundtables, lecture demonstrations, festival platforms, symposiums & conferences, multidisciplinary performances and walkthroughs. We seek to democratize the arts, create new audiences, and deepen engagement by providing a platform that gives equal access and opportunity to new learners, fresh voices and nascent minds in order to nurture future stakeholders for the creative community in India. To date, AVID has conducted over 1150 programs and connected with more than 140,000 individuals, a widely eclectic group of life-long learners including students, patrons, practitioners, influencers, thought leaders and cultural & creative enthusiasts in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore, Goa and Gujarat. We have also made our mark internationally, with events and collaborations in Dubai and New York. We regularly collaborate and partner with institutions, organisations and initiatives like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), one of the apex bodies that impact cultural policy and the creative sector as a whole. We have been at the helm of programming at the Royal Opera House, Mumbai India’s only surviving Opera House since its reopening in 2016. We believe in the importance of arts for social change and we regularly offer our support and platforms for Social Advocacy. Thanks to a dedicated and innovative team, as well as a growing and evolving community of learners, AVID continues to give truth to the belief that Learning Never Stops! To keep updated and attend our events, like us on https://www.facebook.com/avidlearning/, follow us on https://twitter.com/AvidLearning and Instagram: @avidlearning or log onto http://www.avidlearning.in