"Rites/Rights/Rewrites: Women's Video Art from India"
March 2 - April 1, 2005
Sites throughout the Center
Arshiya Lokhandwala, Curator
Monali Meher
Surekha
Sharmila Samant
Darshana Vora
Shilpa Gupta
Shakuntala Kulkarni
Wednesday, March 2 , 2005
6:30 PM :: Opening Reception :: Main Gallery
7:00 PM :: Live Streaming Performance from Amsterdam, "With or Without Emotional Hangups" by Monali Meher
Rites/Rights/Rewrites, one of the first women’s video art exhibitions from India, makes a strong feminist statement. It presents the female body through the artistic journeys of six women artists who express their individual perspectives while gesturing toward broader post-colonial and socio-political contexts in India and elsewhere. For these women artists, video becomes an allegorical medium to articulate concerns about existing norms and traditions.
The show itself is in its second instantiation. First presented at the Hartell Gallery at Cornell University, the exhibition has been uniquely reconstituted and "located" in the Franklin Center space. Organized according to the Situationist notion of a "dérive" or a drifting, the viewer is invited to stroll through the exhibition that uses multiple spaces within the Center. In a building designed to foster connections and interdisciplinarity, the exhibition provides its spectators with the opportunity to reflect on their own rituals and itineraries of connection and dissonance while journeying down the corridors.
The show also opens with a live web-streamed performance by artist Monali Meher, now living and working in Amsterdam. Her performance, With or Without Emotional Hangups, adds another dimension to the exhibition, leading us to examine our personal notions of “rites” and “rewriting” in the context of the mediated realities in which we live.
Arshiya Lokhandwala was the founder and curator (1995-2002) of Lakeeren Art Gallery in Mumbai. She completed her B A and M A Sociology in 1986 and 1991 respectively. She worked in Advertising in client servicing from 1987 -1994. She was the recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust award in 200-1 for an M A in Creative Curating at Goldsmiths College, London. She was a participant at the Documenta 11 Education program in Kassel in 2002 under the artistic curator Okwui Enwezor. She is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Art department at Cornell University, USA, working in the areas of feminism, new media and globalization.
This exhibit was made possible by the John Hope Franklin Center, the Duke University Center for International Studies and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. The Franklin Center gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the Duke University Nasher Museum of Art and the Duke School of Law.
For more information, contact Rob Sikorski, r.sikorski@duke.edu or 919.684.2867