By Uma Nair
Cardiff, Sep 28 (IANS) India’s N.S. Harsha is among nine artists shortlisted for the third Artes Mundi Prize. The prize looks for works that debate many of today’s big issues.
Man’s destruction of the environment, AIDS’ destruction of man and the problems of marginalized societies are just three of the issues reflected upon by the contenders.
Artes Mundi, Wales’ international contemporary arts initiative, announced Thursday the names of the nine artists shortlisted for the prestigious award.
Two independent curators made this selection – Isabel Carlos from Portugal who was the artistic director of the Sydney Biennale in 2004, and Olabisi Silva from Nigeria who curated the Dakar Biennale in 2006.
“Our aim was to select exciting, emerging artists who provoke and debate the fundamental questions of life and art,” said Carlos.
Some of the complementary themes emerging from this diverse shortlist include that of the environment and man’s effect and relationship to it. Harsha focuses on figures in his paintings, offering a political commentary with echoes of the formal nature of Indian miniature painting.
Harsha’s works offer the artist’s witty and poetic, political and social responses to a variety of issues relating to global economics, the marketplace, and cultural heritage. The figurative and narrative paintings are woven out of the artist’s personal travel experiences, photographs and images culled from the media.
Like a chronicler, often drawing from popular stories and local perceptions of international news events, Harsha depicts on his canvasses small town Indian life in our increasingly globalized times. His intricately detailed canvasses juxtapose seemingly disassociated images of scenes of small town and village India with those of more recognizably international ones. Harsha’s multi-layered narratives strongly suggest that the global is always already located within the local imagination.
Harsha creates paintings that have intimate spaces that bring to mind the basic format of early cinema or theatre halls usually found in small towns and villages. The narratives in Harsha’s satirical canvasses unfold against painted backdrops as his figures – school children, the quintessential Indian farmer, Hindu mythological characters, or sages and clowns – juxtaposed against them act out complex scenes before the viewer.
Adding delicate banners to his paintings, Harsha cleverly plays with text and words. The Mysore-based artist’s imagery is influenced by popular street and poster art, and draws much from children’s text-book illustrations, bazaar art and the forms found in handcrafted folk toys, as evident in the form and treatment of his flattened figures.
The artists selected for this year’s award have experienced varying levels of international exposure in their careers, from group exhibitions in their region to representing their country at biennales such as Venice and Singapore as well as at Documenta XII.
However, the 40,000 pound ($80,600) Artes Mundi Prize gives these artists the unique opportunity to present a major body of work to a very broad audience both in Britain and internationally. The prize will be awarded at the end of April 2008.