Art in A Physical Context: Changes in the Relationships between the Visual Art, Space, and Territory

Speaker: Dario Gamboni
Discussant: Shukla Sawant
In collaboration with Pro-Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council

January 24, 2012 | 6.30 pm
Auditorium, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai

“Globalization” also means an ever increasing circulation of images and artefacts. Around 1800, keen observers such as Goethe noted that this movement had already begun and that henceforth, works of art would no longer be seen and appreciated primarily in the location for which they had been made. The very idea of art became associated with sitelessness, an independence from place as well as from time and history. Ever since, however, some artists and theoreticians have tried to counter this “dislocation” by creating and praising works meant to be “site-specific”. The history of art has been deeply involved in these contradictory tendencies and it is only recently that a “geography of art” has started to gain a foothold in the English language.

Dario Gamboni is professor of art history at the University of Geneva since 2004. He was a member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fellow at CASVA, Washington DC, Meret Oppenheim Prize 2006, Senior Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, and Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. He was also a guest professor at the universities of Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires, Freiburg im Breisgau, Mexico, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo. He has (co)curated exhibitions including Iconoclash (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2002) and Une image peut en cacher une autre (Grand Palais, Paris, 2009). He has published many books and articles including La plume et le pinceau. Odilon Redon et la littérature (Paris 1989), The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution (New Haven/London 1997), and Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art (London 2002).

Shukla Sawant is a visual artist and currently an Associate Professor of Visual Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests include Contemporary Art and Art in Colonial India. She has been a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of London and studied at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts Paris. Shukla works with photography, installation, and printmaking and her theoretical interests extend to writing on contemporary art. She has lectured extensively in various institutions and has been actively associated with artists’ initiatives.