Studio in Rajasthan

Artists: Waswo X. Waswo with collaborators Rajesh Soni and R. Vijay

April 7, 2011 | 6.30 pm
Studio X, Mumbai

Studio in Rajasthan is a project that the artist, Waswo X. Waswo has worked for nearly five years, producing a body of work that consists primarily of hand-painted digital studio portraiture and autobiographical miniature paintings. Waswo has worked with a small team of other artists, models and assistants and sometimes compares his role to a film director who oversees the labour of his team and reserves final artistic judgement. The photo hand-colourist Rajesh Soni and the miniaturist R. Vijay are two artists who work together with Waswo and have been given consistent recognition for their contributions to the project, and even sign the finished work. Rajesh Soni and R. Vijay will join Waswo in a presentation of their joint efforts, discussing the nature of their work, what separates a collaborator from a technical assistant, questions of authorship and intellectual property rights, and the give and take in the bringing of vague concepts to the status of finished art objects.

Waswo X. Waswo studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Center for Photography, and Studio Marangoni, The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. He has lived and travelled in India for over ten years and has made his home in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the past five years. There he collaborates with several local artists for his artistic projects and is represented in India by Gallery Espace, New Delhi, and in Thailand by Serindia Gallery, Bangkok.

Rajesh Soni an artist living in Udaipur who has become known primarily for his abilities to hand paint digital photographs. He is the son of artist Lalit Soni, and the grandson of Prabhu Lal Soni (Verma), who was once court photographer and hand-colourist to the Maharana Bhopal Singh of Mewar. His skills of hand-colouring photographs were passed down to Rajesh through the intermediary of his father, Lalit.

R. Vijay is a grandnephew of the historic Rajasthani miniaturist Ram Gopal Vijayvargiya. The artist received little formal training and his miniature painting style has been described as naïve, though his works have drawn attention and praise from various critics throughout India. He has developed an art language which is an eclectic mix of Persian and Mughal styles, along with strands of the Company School of Indo-British art.