The Fabulation Project

Session 5: For The People To Come

Date - 20 Sep 24

Time - 6.00pm onwards

Location - KNMA Saket

Join us for yet another engaging session from our artist talk series: THE FABULATION PROJECT. It is a series of conversations and encounters exploring contemporaneity in the arts practices, that are also a work of story making for a 'people to come', stories which they shall inherit. In an attempt to contextualise contemporary art practice this series of talks engages with story teller and story making as central and crucial to the discourses. So, we try to unravel layers of an artist’s body of work and look for what they narrate (or choose not to) about the times we live in.

The program will be followed by light refreshments.

Vikrant Bhise, will present his body of work and be in conversation with writer and editor, Abhay Sardesai and artist and researcher, Rahee Punyashloka

Vikrant Bhise:

(b. 1984, Mumbai, India) is a visual artist who lives and works in Mumbai, India. An alumnus of the L. S. Raheja School of Art (2010) and The Sir J. J. School of Art (2011), Mumbai, Vikrant’s artistic practice iterates his commitment to the revolutionary spirit inherent in the Ambedkarite consciousness. At the forefront of the struggle against caste-based domination and its vertiginous implications on land, liberty and labour, he is committed to the expression of social justice, the realization of enduring reform through activism, and the remembrance of struggles against caste, class and gender-based oppression. Working across monumental scrolls and multi-paneled paintings incandescent with the light of resistance that once illuminated the murals of post-revolution Mexico, as well as smaller works with ink on paper which holds the urgency of proximate witnessing of the human condition in the vein of Somnath Hore, Vikrant’s iconography is informed and deliberate in its radicality. His selected solo exhibitions include Human, curated by Katharina Domscheit-D'Souza, Jehangir Art Gallery (Mumbai, 2019) and Sense and Sensibilities: A Reflective Realisation, curated by Dr. Y.S. Alone, Anant Art Gallery (Noida, 2024). He is the recipient of a National Award by Lalit Kala Akademi for the series Impressions, in 2018. 

His most recent show includes the one at Experimenter - Colaba, Mumbai:

We Will See, a two-person exhibition of Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah and Vikrant Bhise. 

Abhay Sardesai:

Currently its Consulting Editor, Abhay Sardesai was the Editor of ART India from 2002 to 2024. He has edited around 75 volumes of the prestigious magazine – it offers one of the most comprehensive and critical archives of the evolving history of modern and contemporary Indian art. Under his Editorship, ART India acquired a Culture Studies orientation and became one of the principal and persuasive platforms for independent art criticism in South Asia. Abhay has taught Aesthetics and Literary Criticism at the University of Mumbai; Language, Literature, Communication Skills and Criticism at SNDT University; Art History and Writing at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, among other pedagogic and museumic spaces. Abhay writes in English and translates from Marathi, Konkani and Hindi. In 2023, he curated Bibliopolis, a show exploring the inner lives of books, at the David Sassoon Library in Mumbai.

Rahee Punyashloka: 

(b. 1993, Bhubaneswar) (they/he) is an artist, writer, researcher, and experimental filmmaker based out of Bhubaneswar and New Delhi. Working across disciplines, he seeks to illuminate the vastly unrepresented/underrepresented artistic history of the anti-caste struggle and the Dalit identity through interventions around lingering absences and speculative extrapolations within the archive. His works have been exhibited in numerous venues including Pulp Society (New Delhi), Latitude 28 (New Delhi); International Film Festival Rotterdam; Athens Video Art Festival; Tribeca Film Festival (New York); ARKIPEL (Jakarta); Ishara Art Foundation (Dubai); KHOJ (New Delhi); Museum of Art and Photography (Bangalore); Arts House (Melbourne), among others.

Image credits:

Vikrant Bhise, Gathering, 2024, Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in