GFEST 2015 visual arts exhibition – Mon 9 to Sat 14 November
Entry Free
Mon to Sat 11 am – 6 pm.
The legendary artist, writer, activist and curator Sunil Gupta presents a series of photographs that explore moments from South Asian Queer life sketches.
Sunil Gupta’s work has been shown in over 90 international solo exhibitions, most recently at Yale University, New Haven, CT (2015). Formative group shows include Pairs Bombay, Delhi at the Pompidou Centre (2011) and Keywords at the Tate Liverpool (2013). Gupta’s curatorial efforts were paramount in the monumental exhibition, Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at The Whitechapel Gallery, London and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.
In the 1980s, in his Exiles series, Gupta constructed documentary images of gay men in architectural spaces in Delhi. Gupta studied under Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research, his early documentary series Christopher Street, New York was shot in the mid-1970s.
Gupta’s published work includes the monographs Queer: Sunil Gupta (Prestel/Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011), Wish You Were Here: Memories of a Gay Life (Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2008), and Pictures From Here (Chris Boot Ltd., New York, 2003).
Sunil is currently Visiting Professor at UCA, Farnham, UK. His work is in many private and public collections including; George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate Britain and Harvard University. Gupta is represented by sepiaEYE, New York.
Based between London and India, Charan Singh‘s photography focuses on marginalised people and includes a group of gay men in India. Kothis, Hijras, Giriyas and Others series depicts different communities of men with their own sexual identities, from eunuchs to transvestites.
Charan Singh is currently a PhD candidate in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. Singh’s photographic practice is informed by his thirteen years of HIV/AIDS work and community activism in India, along with a formal study of the history of art and photography. He is interested in the representation of desires, identities, gender, sexualities, relationships, loss, trauma and recovery. Simultaneously, he questions notions of the genre of self portraiture, however the principal common thread of his works are memory, story telling, and masculinity. His work has been exhibited at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2015) and The Photographers Gallery, London (2015). Singh is represented by sepiaEYE, New York.
Maya Chowdhry, in collaboration with Sarah Hymas, presents works exploring the fragility of life by examining the impact of climate change on the Indian subcontinent. The Installation includes interactive poetic sculptures, that use both sculptural extension and augmented reality to illuminate anthropogenic climate change.
Maya Chowdhry is an inTer-aCtive artist, writing poetry and making site-specific installation primarily focusing on immersive work. Her current work involves story-making and site-specific Installation, exploring the juxtaposition and conflicts of new technology with the ‘natural world’, utilising text, film, animation, photography and the Web. Sarah Hymas is a poet, artist book maker and performer. Her work is a continuing response to the relationship between society and the sea.
Raju Rage presents critical reflections into QTIPOC creative practice through his works ‘Project/ed’ alongside a new series of collages ‘I Haven’t Got a Picture to Show You What i’ve Been Through’
Raju Rage is an interdisciplinary artist, creative-critical writer and uses art and activism to forge creative survival. Based in London and working beyond, Raju focuses on de-con-structive techniques of resistance such as interruption, confusion, disturbance and anti-performance; primarily using embodiment and working with assemblages of sculpture and multi-formulations of unspoken narratives in multimedia formats. They are an organiser and member of an arts collective: Collective Creativity
Raisa Kabir presents a series of photographic essays on South Asian Queer Diaspora and identities through remarkable montages called “(in)visible space”
Raisa Kabir is a multi-disciplinary artist, weaver and writer, who uses contemporary textiles, sound and photography to interrogate, and question concepts around the politics of dress in connection to space, gender, race, and sexuality. Trained as a weaver at Chelsea College of Art, Raisa has presented work around South Asian queer dress identity and culture, queer femme of colour invisibility, as well as cultural appropriation, ethnicity, Diasporas and dress.
Also, don't miss
A panel discussion on ‘LGBTQI identities: Asian art perspective’ on Sat 14 Nov – 2 to 4 pm
GFEST 2015 artist Sunil Gupta will talk about his activism and photographic works. Art critic and writer Anna McNay who has written an essay on GFEST 2015 artists, will chair the panel. Jaheda Choudhury of Bengali hip-hop band Ajah UK, and Rohit K Dasgupta, lecturer at University of Southampton will join the panel discussions.