Kindling Change: Fired Material Design Interventions in Ceramics and Glass for Living Sustainable Craft

KINDLING CHANGE: FIRED MATERIAL DESIGN INTERVENTIONS IN CERAMICS AND GLASS FOR LIVING SUSTAINABLE CRAFT

Curated By Kristine Michael

The exhibition will seek to uncover a hidden narrative of transnational modernism in ceramics and glass within a national art history, which negotiates the modern with the indigenous or traditional through a vast and varied terrain of aesthetic production post-independence. Beginning with the reworking of stylistic forms from pan Asian or European influences of Oriental and Western aesthetics, designers and NGO’s working with craft drew selectively from a range of artistic and aesthetic legacies of craft and craftsmanship, iconographic and mythological sources. This quest characterizes an important facet of the development of a modern idiom of Indian contemporary ceramics and glass.

Through the installation works of six key design interventions with craftsmen using the medium of ceramics and glass, the exhibition will reference transnational modernism and the national, the development of a creative identity and new iconographies grappling with the dilemmas of tradition and independent artistic expression. This includes the building of new institutional frameworks of patronage, collections, marketing, sustainability, display that is not just searching for a ‘hybrid’ between tradition and modernity or ‘mimicry’ with reference to Far East or Western aesthetic styles.

This exhibition will discuss artistic modernism in contemporary ceramic and glass in India in response to the growing interest and global recognition of non-Western craft by tracing significant threads of the genealogy and the emergence of the modern craftsman in changing social frameworks. This identity refers to contestations over the socio-cultural self and society, not only re-imaging the past but also through extended artistic debate and praxis creating new means for conceiving the future.

Installations demonstrating designer and craftsman cluster collaboration includes a short film and text panels.

Image courtesy Srila Mookherjee.

Disclaimer : The views and opinions expressed in any performance, artwork or installation do not reflect the official policy or position of the institution.