Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art
India reflected in its art
Following the extremely successful exhibition Mahjong. Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection in 2005, Horn Please is the second presentation within the framework of the «new frontiers in art» series. Horn Please brings together works from over thirty artists from India who have one thing in common: They take pleasure in telling stories that are entertaining, that pose social questions and that strike an immediate chord. India, in all its diversity, is reflected.
Horn Please! Truck drivers in India write this on the back
of their trucks. One is supposed to sound one's horn in order to be
allowed to pass or to avoid a collision when the truck reverses. Horn
Please! In India, art is also communicative and has something to tell
us. The narrative tradition has been a part of Indian culture for a very long time: In myths and legends, religions and stories of the Gods, in
oral literary traditions and in the «Bollywood» entertainment industry
the narrative takes centre stage. The more than thirty artists taking
part in the exhibition draw a lively picture of India today and
yesterday. They depict scenes of everyday life and fiction, mythology
and satire, autobiographical material, social and historical subjects. Horn Please unites different perspectives on India, converted into
narrative form by artists who have spent most of their lives there.
Great changes in the land of diversity
The economic and social effects of globalization have caused
great changes over recent years, and this is also true of India. The
works in this exhibition reflect the enormous economic, political and
societal changes that have taken place in India, the land of countless
languages, religions and cultures. What does it mean to live in a
country whose heterogeneity was always a problem but also always its
greatest richness? Many works in the exhibition deal with this topic.
And they also deal with our times - with the question of what it means
to live in a time in which the individual does not just act within one
world but in many crossing, overlapping or unconnected worlds.
Contemporary artists also see it as their task to give the socially
disadvantaged or the ethnic and religious minorities a voice and take it upon themselves to tell their stories.
Stories without beginning or end
Horn Please is presenting works of art from roughly 1980 until
today and is divided under four headings: 1. The collision of narrative
worlds; 2. Place for people - a revival; 3. Old Stories - told anew/
Eloquent metaphors; 4. Living in Alice's times. The stories travel in
all directions, are presented in changing media, in varying
chronological perspectives and without an unbroken narrative thread,
without beginning and end. Taking the 1980s as its point of departure
and following the red thread of narrative, the exhibition attempts, on
the one hand, to show the consistencies and inconsistencies in Indian
art production. On the other, individual works of art are to be
presented, that, thanks to their narrative components, possess the
potential to touch us very directly - independently of our geographic
and cultural origins - to pleasurably entertain us and to confront us
with critical social issues or, by leaving «gaps» in the narrative, to
stimulate us to active participation. Horn Please! An exhibition on the
telling of stories, staged as a story.
