Swedish art curators see huge
interest in India in changing contemporary art world
“People are very curious about
contemporary art of India. They want to know what it’s like, how it is
different from or similar to Western art,” says Helene Larsson Pousette, art
curator and head of Events Unit of the Swedish Institute.
Ms. Pousette is in Kochi with
her husband Johan Pousette, also a curator and manager for contemporary art at
the Swedish Exhibition Agency.
The couple have years of
experience facilitating artistic exchange and curating exhibitions in various
parts of the world. They arrived in India three weeks ago, Johan en route from
the Singapore Biennale and Helene from a project in Vietnam. The Swedish duo
are on a month-long trip around India to explore its art and culture. “We
wanted to investigate the art here. Not just the work of Indian artists, but
also how the culture of the country affects other artists,” says Ms. Pousette.
Johan Pousette feels that the
art world is in the middle of paradigm shift from when art from the developing
world was seen internationally as post-colonial to the ‘post post-colonial.’
The voice of the developing world was earlier represented by people born in
these countries, but who were later educated in the West. The focus is slowly
shifting towards finding authentic, local voices from the developing world. “India,
China and South East Asia may be becoming the most important centres for art.
The West has so much to learn from here. We have to promote international
exchange for a better understanding of both sides. Art residency programmes are
very important for this,” says Mr. Pousette, who founded the Baltic Art Centre,
an artist-in-residency and exhibition programme. Artists taking part in the
residency at the Art Centre are given the freedom to work on their art without
constraints. “It works in an open-ended way. We make no demands of the artist.
Sometimes the results are stunning when the artists don’t need to fit into a
box,” says Mr. Pousette, who also curated the 2009 edition of the Goteborg
Biennale.
The duo, who delivered a
lecture in the city on Sunday evening as part of the Let’s Talk series
organised by the Kochi Muziris Biennale Foundation in collaboration with the
Orthic Creative Centre, also found time to visit Pepper House in Fort Kochi,
which is hosting the Biennale Foundation’s international art residency
programme. “It is really fantastic there. I think artists would be really happy
to work there. The space, the surroundings, the library, the café are all
beautiful. It’s a very interesting place,” says Ms. Pousette.
The couple hopes that there will
be more cultural exchanges between India and Sweden in the future. What they
gained from their visit to India, they say, is a strong desire to come back
again.
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