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The India Art Fair 2012

In its fourth year, the India Art Fair is still evolving as is the system within which it functions. Increasingly

and along with the growing participation of western galleries in the art fair, questions regarding the

ecosystem of the Indian art world are being voiced in public panels and private conversations. It is telling

that the public space which hosts these conversations is a mixture of private museums, notably the Kiran

Nadir Museum in Delhi, the Devi Art Foundation and the commercial such as the India Art Fair and in

private, between dealers, artists, galleries and collectors. Suffice to say that the Indian art world is a

complex place to operate in, mirroring in complexity the wider Indian market.

Neha Kirpal, founder and Director of the India Art Fair, who this year brought in as partners, Will Ramsay

and Sandy Angus, currently partners in the Hong Kong Art Fair, says that the fourth edition has evolved in

terms of its production values as well as its potential. It sets certain precedents, specifically in terms of the

standardization of production quality and adoption of the White tent Aesthetic, the strategic alliances withcorporate institutions such as the Jindal steel group, Asia Society, the Asia Art Archive, the outreach and

internship program, and the tie in with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

In particular the White Tent Aesthetic, a standardization of production and operations as well as

aesthetics that is internationally accepted has resulted in wider aisles between booths, a better system of

accountability between galleries and operations and improved management and feedback. Although some

quirks remain the exponential growth in the operations and production of the fair, which included leveling

the ground at the location before the tents were installed and the laying down of a paved road prove that the

change of location from the Pragati Maidan (Government owned property) to the NSIC grounds (privately

owned) was the right decision. Problems in part due to the lack of government support hamper some of the

operations and tend to bear heavily on the international galleries participating at the fair. In particular the

import duty on art levied by the government, which at 15% of CIF value increases overheads. This year the

organizers lobbied the government to assign to the fair a temporary museum status, which would allow

international galleries to bypass the levy, however only Galleria Continua availed itself of the opportunity.

Neha Kirpal envisions the fair as a platform of layered benefits that includes networks, sponsors, collectors,

artists, academia and galleries. In particular the internship program in collaboration with 67 art colleges,

which sees students intern with the fair over the course of the year, provides hands on experience for

students and underlines the commitment of the fair to the current and next generation of the entrepreneurial

young, a large demographic. One of the chief achievements of the fair, according to the organizers is the

fact that the fair has managed to grow over the last four years inspite of the government and without much

of the governments support. However the enablement of soft power, of an India centric fair - where 50%

of the participating galleries are Indian - and the inclusion of pan Asian institutions such as the Asia

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Society and the Asia Art Archive, suggests a synergy that creates a platform from which soft power

emerges. However, the organizers are clear that at some point the participation and support of the

government in setting in place the infrastructure and incentives is essential going forward.

In one of the speaker panels, when asked to elaborate on the systems in the western art world and their

application to the Indian art world, White Cube gallerys director of exhibitions, Tim Marlow said that one

of the reasons for White Cubes participation in the fair this year was to understand some of the

complexities of the Indian market. In comparison he said, the Chinese market is more evolved than the

Indian market, nevertheless the lack of an evolved system can be a window of opportunity.

The western market has a set of established roles for galleries, artists, curators, advisors, auction houses and

writers, along with a history of discourse, academic research and an established canon, which includes the

recordings of changing and evolving roles and their contextualization. In other words, the western system

encompasses all these roles and allows room for debate and change, a legacy of modernist thought. Being ayounger market in many ways, India over the last ten years has evolved a hybrid by cherry picking from the

west and in addition providing its own unique ingredients. The danger has been that the Indian market is

just that, market driven, without depth that comes from creating an established canon, discourse and

historical context. But that too is a simplification.

On the surface the Indian ecosystem is market driven. A result of exponential and speculative growth by

domestic collectors and buyers from 2003 2008 until the global markets crashed. During this time, prices

increased exponentially and as a result the generation of artists who came into being during that time

aesthetisized their works and their concerns onto and with regard to the growing interest in the Indian

economy and the several dichotomies that the country is subject to, including but not limited to the

dichotomies of poverty and affluence, the corruption and the remaking of a national identity geared towards

attracting foreign direct investment and many others micro issues. This also increased investment and

speculation into the art market by the Indian Diaspora, as well as the start the fashioning of art into an

investment class by home grown art funds such as Ossian, Crayon Capital and other private funds. In the

Indian market, the moderns such as Souza, S.H. Raza, M.F. Husain, and Teyb Mehta, gained traction while

the contemporary artists such as Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, T.V Santhosh, Riyas Komu followed in price

increases. Out of this evolving system, the roles of artists, galleries, curators and collectors were

increasingly blurred and still remain so.

The discourse around Indian art tended towards being driven by the market and by the aesthetic reflecting

the dichotomy and complexity of India. It was, and still is to a large extent a representation of India that

comes closer to truth in many ways than the government perhaps is willing to acknowledge. To some

extent this explains the lack of support the government is willing to provide to the Indian art world. Yet it

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would be a negligent to ignore the role that culture plays in the establishment of a national and international

identity, or more succinctly, the projection of soft power. One of the many ways the Chinese and western

systems are different from their Indian counterpart.

The lack of an established system tends to be problematic when it is solely market driven and opportunistic

when the market abates. By this regard the Indian system is a mixture of both and the general consensus

seems to be that an education/discourse driven system is sorely needed. In some cases this is lip service.

Education, as Tim Marlow hinted is first and foremost artist driven and organic, while on the other end of

the spectrum also the role of museums and galleries. In Indias case some of the onus falls on the India Art

fair, which with its Collectors Circle, instituted this year, seeks to educate potential collectors while the

auction houses, Sothebys, Christies and Saffronart who also focus on educating collectors. In part this

interest in educating the collector serves a purpose in the Indian Art world, however vested those interests

may be. Galleries also do their part with The Guild, Jyan Prabha, Arbor Research, Clark House in Mumbai

instituting a panel series alongside experimental research driven exhibitions, while in Delhi, JNU, Khojprovides an alternative platform for artists to stage experiments, while Video Wednesdays by Gallery

Espace was a pioneer in exhibiting multimedia based works. Museums and institutions are also starting to

create educational programs in the coming year, most notably a lectures series at the Kiran Nadir Museum

curated by Gayatri Sinha.

Where the artists and the curators are concerned, both words being slightly bastardized in current

global/local cultural contexts, where even the relationship between the definition of art and those who

ascribe meaning to that definition are fraught with debate. As with everything else there is a mixture of the

traditional and the contemporary in India. Segregated into modern and contemporary, these distinctions are

based around the art and its contexts. In modern art, the tendency is to contextualize the influence of the

Paris school on artists such as S.H. Raza, Souza, and M.F. Husain, played out in the background of

independence and post independence India. In the contemporary, the tendency is to contextualize through

the eyes of a modern/emerging economic power reconciling its delusions and illusions. This too is in some

cases a surface issue as a subsystem of artists and curators are conducting and establishing alternative

discourses that exist under the surface of the traditional art market. It is this, which has the potential to

create systemic change.

In artistic and curatorial terms there is a robust phase of experimentation emerging out of artists studios,

which has the potential to upend some of the experimental work already being conducted in the west, most

notably by Manifesta and Documenta. Specifically collaborations in conceptual and investigative work

thanks in part to institutions such as the Raqs Media Collective, Khoj, Sarai and Shristi in Bangalore

indicate a trend towards contemporary issues. The potential to fashion a place of canon for Indian trans-

media artists for example, that stems from experiment and collaboration is vast and being explored by the

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younger generation of artists. However the concurrent growth in collectors who pay attention to these

experiments is lacking, as is the structure in place for smaller artists driven initiatives to gain access to

adequate funding. This is perhaps where the system becomes opportunistic. There is room for institutions to

fund artist initiatives, projects and experimental spaces; specifically in the establishment of alternative

organic systems that given Indias dichotomy and diversity have the potential to grow into full-scale social

and cultural projects. Furthermore, the potential for system wide change and or consolidation is also a first

movers advantage for the commercial end of the Indian Art world as well as for the cultural. One major

initiative is the establishment of the Skoda Prize, now in its second year, which rewards prize money of

$20,000 an artist. The jury consists of a rotating roster of academia, curators and museums. As a branding

exercise it is not a new idea however in the case of India the scale of the prize money sets a precedent

which opens the way for other corporations to institute their own prizes. Indian organizations such as Avid

affiliated with the Essar group also carries out an outreach program that is based in culture and education.

This year the Skoda prize and its choice of the finalists, specifically the installation of Navin Thomas,showing presently at the Lalit Kala academy underlines the nascent nature of ethical and artistic

considerations and responsibilities in the Indian ecosystem. The installation of the aforementioned artist

places several hand reared birds in a gallery space. Immediately the questions of their use, the ethical nature

of the choice of live animals rather than representations of them, as well as the responsibilities of several

players, the Lalit Kala Academy, the Skoda Prize, the jury as well as the artist in question arise, however,

the lack of a collective, even temporal body of people coming forward to address these issues under one

voice is lacking. It effectively underscores the lack of a collective voice, whether made up of artists,

galleries, collectors or any other set of players that come together to agree on a set of standards or a set of

ethical behaviors to which to adhere to.

As roles in the Indian Art system are diffused to begin with, the influence that can be crafted through the

erasure of several roles and the responsibilities traditionally ascribed to these roles will also being to

change if they are not fully negated in due process. A case in point is the ethical and artistic responsibilities

at question in the merging roles of galleries, writers, art critics (which role is becoming increasingly market

driven), curators and artists, all which exists more often than not in the same person. This specifically is the

case in India. However as these mergers become commonplace the lack of a system of rigorous critique and

redress and counter critique (which comes from critics, institutions and academia and not usually from

auction houses, collectors and galleries) becomes a danger to traditional and contemporary definitions of

art, both already at risk of being irrelevant and meaningless. Perhaps India will set a precedent for the rest

of the art world and drop the art from the lexicon and replace it with market. Or perhaps there will be

system overlaid with an alternate organically grown system that allows for healthy and rigorous debate.

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Indicative of the reflexive questioning of the latter are some of the conversations at the India Art Fair.

Particularly those that relate to its structures, comparisons to the western markets, conversations around

post colonial dialogues and debates and the institutional embrace of performance art. These debates that

come with built in contexts in terms of vested interests, the market whose hand is never far behind and the

artistic concerns of curators and artists, are nonetheless an indication of an Indian system that is beginning

to evolve even as it seeks maturity. A collaborative building of systems, structures, regulations, and best

practices is already being discussed and in some cases being put in place. The oft repeated lack of

government support is perhaps also a balancing act between cultural soft power projected outwards as well

as cultural democratization projected inwards, indicated by the 130,000 plus attendance at the Art Fair over

the last 2 years alongside the rise of the Literature festival in Jaipur, where the debate around the censorship

of the Satanic Verses and Salman Rushdie(directed inwards) mirrors the long standing censorship of M.F.

Husain in the art world who passed away last year. This is India negotiating and investigating its cultural

political and social identity concurrently on an international and domestic stage. Somewhere in between

those negotiations there will be precedents set and broken and as in the case of any emerging identity,several roles cast away in favor of others.

Even as India is subject to its own unique yet oddly universal rhythms (the problem of being a large diverse

democracy that acts socialist, capitalist and communist at the same time in many of the same instances) the

systems of redress, systems of ethical considerations and the responsibilities of all the players in a market,

not subject to adequate critique, educational or intellectual rigor, transparency (which is a fallacy) and

regulation whether internal or external, need to be at the very least attempted and at best established and

open for constant investigation.

In terms of the Indian art ecosystem which is a subset of a larger system, the importance of setting in place

a system of records, canon and art history whether linear or non-linear, along with the establishment of, as

Kiran Nadir, Director of the Kiran Nadir Museum suggested, an association of all players and participants

that adhere to a system of best practices and accountability will prove to be sensible and will leave room for

artistic, cultural and commercial growth in the Indian market that is stable and able to attract real

investment and dialogue going forward.

The fair as Neha Kirpal says, has been inclusive of the concerns of stakeholders tending towards

collaborative and collective decision making that takes into account as far as possible the varied opinions

and interests of all. This approach is not without its problems, but gives off a clear signal that the fair and

its stakeholders are here to grow together.

- Renuka Sawhney

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