Sugar Tuesday

We wanted to be famous, glamorous and rich. That is to say, we wanted to be artists and we thought that if we were famous and glamorous we could say we were artists and we would be. - Glamour, 1975

When you mention “art” and “South Asian” together, it’s often images of music or dance that initially surface. Indian culture generally veers towards instrument, costume, and body language to propel artistic expression to the masses. However, India has also been home to intricate artefacts and stonework for centuries. Although traditional art from India may take on different manifestations through varied mediums as pottery, painting, metalwork, weaving, and jewellery, not all of its expression is obliged to reflect cultural history and patronage as it once did; Contemporary Indian artists, especially those who currently reside in North America, have their own identity and allow themselves to express their work beyond a localized expectation. Maybe not so mainstream as Jay Sean or Kal Penn, these artists are just as appealing, exciting, and creative – only more subdued in their public display, hidden behind the publicity of their work, so we don’t know the buzz around them. Well, it’s about time we raise that canvas and see who’s behind it, because it’s definitely buzz worthy and for us girls, perhaps even crush worthy!

Easy on the eyes, who wouldn’t want to follow him around town? Street artist, Aakash Nihalani connects his own dots all over the big apple, using colorful adhesive tape. He shares, “I try to offer people a chance to step into a different New York than they are used to seeing….a momentary escape from routine schedules and lives.” Creating fluorescent graphics out of tape, Nihalani selectively places isometric rectangles and squares around the city to “highlight unexpected contours and elegant geometry of the city itself,” with all of his work done on site with pure instinct and little or no planning. When looking at his work, it’s as if your mind is playing tricks on you; what you see appears as an allusion due to the angles and multi-dimensional lines placed to “create a new space within the existing space,” allowing viewers to “unexpectedly disconnect from their reality.” Recently featured at the prestigious white-walled gallery, ARARIO, which specializes in Indian, Korean and Chinese art , it is apparent - aside from his nationality - there is nothing ‘Indian’ about his art, but rather a complete contrast to what conventional artists choose to preserve with their work.

New York Street Advertising Takeover by Aakash Nihalani

Bicycle Film Festival, New York by Aakash Nihalani

Arario Gallery, New York by Aakash Nihalani

Sharing homes between New York and New-Delhi, Nitin Mukul is a visual artist who produces paintings to combine pop cultural references from India’s saturated media environment with biological structures and cultural references. During one of his exhibits, he detailed the struggle between the natural and man-made, the migrants and residents, and legal and illegal. According to New York Art Beat, “this stubborn resistance to enduring impositions of identity, order and classification spills over onto Mukul's canvases” where in one example, he illustrates “dense knots of jury-rigged electric cables sprawling out of a transformer box simultaneously evoke the clustered networks of arteries in a human body and the ad hoc informality of Delhi's explosive urban growth.” His hybrid use of oils, acrylics, and washes of black tea creates a complex, densely layered surface where materials confront each other in parallel to discrete historical positions. Mukul’s images pull in and out of focus, perhaps suggesting the reality of recognizing urban Indian history.

Flying Lotus by Nitin Mukul

Birth of a Nation by Nitin Mukul

Minute Old Migrant by Nitin Mukul

An even deeper look into South Asian painting is ironically captured by young Caucasian artist, Michael Buhler Rose. One could criticize that he is a white male artist continuing the Orientalist fixation of the “other”. However, born in New Jersey in 1980, Rose became a Gaudaya Vaishnava during the Hare Krishna Movement in the West, when he was 14 years old and has focussed on conveying images of women from the same community. He states, “the women are second generation members of the Hare Krishna Community, some were born or raised in India, or somehow have inherited its cultural-religious heritage. They are, for the most part, of European descent and now live in a community in North Central Florida, just outside of Gainesville.” Thus, representation and identity have become important in Rose’s work as he carefully strokes postures and compositions that are reminiscent of the works of the 19th century artist Raja Ravi Varma. To emulate such prestigious works, is a privy in itself as Rose has taken iconic samples from his own community and placed them in the same traditional images seen through Varma’s masterpieces. With confidence and much success in his creative output, Rose is not intimidated of how he is perceived or accepted by the global market. Generally, artists of Indian origin that work internationally, feel uncomfortable being spoken of from the perspective of their ethnic background and some even deny their work has non-western influence. That is not the case with Rose, as he embraces his ability to resurface Varma’s vision without being “too localized”, an implication ethnic artists would probably encounter.

Michael Buhler Rose

Michael Buhler Rose

Speaking of Indian artists who stray from that ‘ethnic art’ label, according to South Asian Art Expert, Meenakshi Thirukode, Subodh Gupta is “bigger than any other practicing, contemporary artist from India.” He is based in New-Delhi but has vast Western representation, “associated with the right network of institutional and individual power players in the industry.” His pieces have sold for record prices, due largely to work being displayed in established Western galleries, as opposed to niche Indian art galleries. Gupta’s work encompasses sculpture, installation, painting, photography, performance and video, using simple everyday objects such as kitchen utensils, bicycles, and lunch boxes to translate ordinary function into beauty within the context of Indian culture, which negates the initial meaning of the item; he attempts to change the ordinary into something fascinating – an object of art. One of his recent major works, consisting of Indian cooking utensils, is "Line of Control" (2008), a colossal mushroom cloud constructed entirely of pots and pans. Known as “the Damien Hirst of Delhi,” Gupta appropriates everyday objects and turns them into artworks that dissolve their former meaning and function. This has given him resemblance to historical artist, Duchamp, who is the artist behind the Mona Lisa (1919). In fact, among Gupta’s new works, is a bronze three-dimensional reworking of the famous painting, itself. This comparison is of the highest regard, where Gupta succeeds in representing his heritage while creating a global aesthetic. Although his work references items found in primitive Indian culture, he believes “Art language is the same all over the world...which allows me to be anywhere.”

Everything is Inside by Subodh Gupta

Left, Mind Shut Down. Right, Untitled by Subodh Gupta

U.F.O by Subodh Gupta

Through works from Gupta, Mukul, Nihalani, and Rose, we see that it is not so much that Indian art has evolved, but rather, the Indian artist – so much that we now appreciate a young Caucasian who is culturally Indian, producing authentic images verses a middle-aged Indian artist who chooses to modernize his work to a western appeal. Gupta has transformed simple primitive artefacts into modern artistic expression, Mukul combines popular culture with post-colonialism and economic transformation, Nihalani uses geometry as abstract art, while Rose retains traditional South Asian illustration. Nonetheless, it is obvious how young artists embrace transient artistic fashion, while they innovatively adopt existing pillars of the traditional art form. Like a secret ingredient, not all artists publicize themselves in order to promote their work. On the contrary, visual artists tend to focus their PR on creating interest around their creative output to make a name for themselves; as artists, their “glamour and fame” comes from fans speaking of their work instead of their name in headlines.