Encounter centred on Nasreen Mohamedi
This encounter serves as an introduction to the retrospective devoted to Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (Karachi, 1937 – Baroda, 1990), an exhibition that looks to acknowledge the specific nature of her work, beyond the canonical accounts that have systematically placed it within minimalist abstraction. Mohamedi’s ouevre, increasingly under the spotlight in the past decade, is presented as a moving body of work - movement that is not solely geopolitical or transnational, demarcating her biography, but also one of displacement through traditional and modern sources and discourses. The encounter, with two interventions followed by a debate between Roobina Karode and Geeta Kapur, strives to reframe and open a discussion around a body of work in which there is the coexistence of concepts - the rational and the poetic, the philosophical and mystical, the specific and the transcendent - as well as formats, painting, diary entries, drawing and photography.
Participants
Geeta Kapur. Art historian and author of numerous publications including: Contemporary Indian Artists (Vikas, Delhi, 1978), When was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (Tulika, Delhi, 2000) and Ends and Means: critical inscriptions in contemporary art (Tulika, Delhi, 2011). She has given lectures and conferences in universities and international institutions and curated projects like Contemporary Indian Art (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1982), Dispossession (I Johannesburg Biennale, 1995), Bombay/Mumbai (in the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis. Tate Modern, 2001) and subTerrain: Artworks in the Cityfold (in the project Body.City. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2003).
