Our Time for a Future Caring is an accompaniment to the India Pavilion exhibition at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia from May 8 to November 24, 2019. The Pavilion marked the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, and featured pre- and post-Independence artists’ interpretation of Gandhi and engagement with the persona and the private life of the man idolised as a paragon of peace, non-violence, equality and self-reliance. The India Pavilion was organised by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, in collaboration with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and curated by Roobina Karode. The exhibition featured mixed media artworks by eight prolific artists —Nandalal Bose, MF Husain, Ashim Purkayastha, Atul Dodiya, GR Iranna, Rummana Hussain, Jitish Kallat and Shakuntala Kulkarni— that imaginatively engaged with nation-building built on the contested history of partition, violence, loss, grief and hope, threaded together by Gandhi’s core ideology of non-violence and self-reliance.

The publication features three extensive essays by Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator, KNMA, detailing the curatorial foundation of India’s second official Pavilion, and how the artworks engage with the thematic while calling attention to the self and the lived processes of the body and mind in relation to others in public and political life.   . Art critic and curator Gayatri Sinha’s essay examines Gandhi’s philosophy and politics and how contemporary Indian artists have imbibed them in their artistic expression.  Akansha Rastogi, Senior Curator, KNMA, unpacks the history of commemorative exhibitions and the balance they need to strike between objectively observing history and mythologisation of the past in her essay.

Edited: Roobina Karode
Publisher: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
Pages: 235
ISBN: 978-8192803791