Papers by Annapurna Garimella
Domus India, 2012
Bangalore is a city with numerous small parks and two large ones, Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park. I liv... more Bangalore is a city with numerous small parks and two large ones, Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park. I live in an area of Bangalore, Jayanagar, which is populated with an unusually high number of parks, many of which have dedicated spaces for children. Over the last ten years, the parks and their play areas in this locality have transformed significantly; these transformations provide significant insights into how children incorporated into public space and what ideas of childhood fuel the design of their play spaces.
Critical Collective, 2023
In the introduction to Motherland: Pushpamala N.'s Woman and Nation (Roli Books 2022), editors Su... more In the introduction to Motherland: Pushpamala N.'s Woman and Nation (Roli Books 2022), editors Sumathi Ramaswamy and Monica Juneja write that the artist's work is the "performative destabilization" of the seeming solidity of the nation-state because she discloses and materializes the "unforeseen possibilities" within. For all the writers in this volume, Bangalore-based Pushpamala N.'s Motherland photo-performances reveal unimagined possibilities in pre-existing,
Contemporary Hindu temples raise aesthetic, economic, political and philosophical questions about... more Contemporary Hindu temples raise aesthetic, economic, political and philosophical questions about the role of architecture in making a place for the sacred in society. This book presents the Hindu temple from the perspectives of institutions and individuals, including priests, building practitioners and worshippers, to consider what it means when the temple is no longer at the centre of Indic life, but has instead become one among several important sites of social praxis. The Contemporary Hindu Temple takes as its subject the multiple forms of architecture, design and sociability that Hindu spaces of worship encompass today. The essays cover shrines located in urban and rururban India, where Hindu temples are being maintained, resuscitated or newly constructed at a rapid pace. The authors of the essays in this volume take the contemporary as a moment in which historic structures, modern renovations, evolving religiosities and new design and construction practices intersect and converge. This centres the temple in a landscape of automobility, wireless connectivity and economic reformation, at the crossroads of informal acts of insertion, formal planning and governmentality, or as an architect-designed structure consciously being pushed toward the fresh horizons that a changing society offers. By focusing on a variety of structures, large and small, on expansive forms of encroachment, and on incremental acts of negotiation and seemingly insignificant processes, small feelings and pieties, this book nuances and expands our understanding of the Hindu temple today.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1466/thumbnail.jp
Astragalo, 2020
An essay about the founder of Indian studio pottery, Gurcharan Singh and how he might have seen I... more An essay about the founder of Indian studio pottery, Gurcharan Singh and how he might have seen Imperial Delhi as it was being laid out and made and as he was simultaneously becoming a ceramist. The essay speculates about the way he would have seen Sultanate and Mughal monuments with blue tiles which stand as jewels in the setting of Delhi's brick buildings, green parks, axial roads and traffic circles.
https://www.marg-art.org/product/UHJvZHVjdDo1Mjc3, 2020
Through a close study of the artworks and representations of tribal communities in central India,... more Through a close study of the artworks and representations of tribal communities in central India, in particular the Pardhans and Gonds, this essay explores the changing nature of their lifeworlds and ties with ecology. With a focus on the celebrated Pardhan artist Jangarh Singh Shyam, the author delves into the complex factors that led to his “discovery” by J. Swaminathan, his training at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, and his association with a modern folk style that came to be recognized as “Gond art”. Looking at how this style has been carried forward by other artists from the region, she raises larger questions about the perception, preservation, institutionalization and consumption of this kind of art that has come to define the community, despite its disconnect from their roots. She also throws light onthe misleading representations of these indigenous peoples within Madhya Pradesh’s tribal museums, and the need to rethink these depictions and forms of engagement.
The Contemporary Hindu Temple: Fragments for a History, Edited by: Annapurna Garimella, Shriya Sridharan, A. Srivathsan, 2019
This book seeks to contribute to the study of contemporary temples by defining the term "contempo... more This book seeks to contribute to the study of contemporary temples by defining the term "contemporary" as a viewpoint to examine ancient as well as recently built temples and to tudy the Hindu temple from the perspective of formal and informal institutions and individuals. One question the contributors seek to address is the notion of sacrality and space-how is the experience of the divine made possible in the contemporary temple? This volume contributes to existing studies and attempts to demarcate fresh horizons for future studies.
The Contemporary Hindu Temple: Fragments for a History Edited by: Annapurna Garimella, Shriya Sridharan, A. Srivathsan, 2019
The essay is a sthalapurana, or place history, of a park in south Bangalore where the emergence o... more The essay is a sthalapurana, or place history, of a park in south Bangalore where the emergence of a "self-born" (svayambhu) god in the 1990s-in this case, Ganesha-transformed the civic and political landscape of the Nehru-era planned space. The materials, the incremental expansion of the temple and the subsequent replanning of the park allowed for this svayambhu Ganesha to gain a temple of his own, as well as two ancillary shrines dedicated to other gods. The author analyses the temple, as it stands today, as a complex aesthetic and sacred experience that is embedded in the anxieties and desires of its publics, party politics, old and new media, especially the use of the smartphone, and the growing digital economic regime.
Waswo X. Waswo and R. Vijay's show "Like a Leaf in Autumn," Gallery Espace, New Delhi , 2019
Catalogue essay for Waswo X. Waswo and R. Vijay's show "Like a Leaf in Autumn," Gallery Espace, N... more Catalogue essay for Waswo X. Waswo and R. Vijay's show "Like a Leaf in Autumn," Gallery Espace, New Delhi, October 11-November 11, 2019
Marg Magazine, 2019
With a focus on Bangalore, this essay offers eight propositions to consider parks as an important... more With a focus on Bangalore, this essay offers eight propositions to consider parks as an important aspect of urban infrastructure. The writer argues that parks are the result of infrastructure making as well as the site for future infrastructure production. They move between discourses on the natural, the common, and the public in one arena; land development and built constructions in another; and aesthetics, heritage and ecology in yet another. A discussion on how parks are refashioned according to changing economies and lifestyles, political demands and civic restrictions highlights the room they offer for imagining and re-imagining the city.
Elle India, 2018
Vivan Sundaram’s Step Inside And You Are No Longer A Stranger (till June 30, 2018) is carefully s... more Vivan Sundaram’s Step Inside And You Are No Longer A Stranger (till June 30, 2018) is carefully structured and spatialised across the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi. The retrospective, inaugurated by Dr Maria Balshaw, director, Tate, is experienced as a series of rooms within rooms. The show provides a broad and
deep sense of how Sundaram has travelled with ideas, materials, family and fellow artists. It starts with his very early work from his student days at London’s Slade School of Fine Art in the mid-1960s, to his return to India and his travels to South America in the 1970s; and the 1970s onwards, his experiments with mixed media, installation art, the meaning of an archive, trash and landscape art, costume design and theatre.
Domus India, 2017
An essay about designing the landmark exhibition “Mutable: Ceramic
and Clay Art in India Since 19... more An essay about designing the landmark exhibition “Mutable: Ceramic
and Clay Art in India Since 1947,” for installation in a repurposed office
space in a non-hierarchical manner that emphasizes the complexity of
modern and contemporary ceramic history.
Madhvi Parekh: The Curious Seeker, DAG Modern, 2017
An art-historical essay that examines Parekh's formation as an artist and the way her career has ... more An art-historical essay that examines Parekh's formation as an artist and the way her career has been continuously repositioned by critics and the art market even as she continues to forge a path that is self-made.
Madhvi Parekh: The Curious Seeker, DAG Modern, 2017
An essay about the Indian artist Madhvi Parekh's monumental, reverse acrylic sheet painting Last ... more An essay about the Indian artist Madhvi Parekh's monumental, reverse acrylic sheet painting Last Supper and her enduring interest in Jesus Christ.
Experimenter Annual Catalog https://experimenter.in/catalog2017.pdf, 2017
An essay about the Kolkata-based artist and teacher Adip Dutta and his drawings and sculpture wh... more An essay about the Kolkata-based artist and teacher Adip Dutta and his drawings and sculpture which work with his experience of the city
Forms of Devotion http://formsofdevotion.org/about-the-book/, 2015
An essay about the labor that popular posters do to mediate devotion and popular culture
Peaking Duck Diaries, Dec 2013
This means it may be reproduced by anyone, as long as it is not for commercial purposes. The work... more This means it may be reproduced by anyone, as long as it is not for commercial purposes. The work cannot be altered, used or transformed. If any material is reproduced, then the license requires attribution to the author and Peaking Duck Diaries, with a link to our website.
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Papers by Annapurna Garimella
deep sense of how Sundaram has travelled with ideas, materials, family and fellow artists. It starts with his very early work from his student days at London’s Slade School of Fine Art in the mid-1960s, to his return to India and his travels to South America in the 1970s; and the 1970s onwards, his experiments with mixed media, installation art, the meaning of an archive, trash and landscape art, costume design and theatre.
and Clay Art in India Since 1947,” for installation in a repurposed office
space in a non-hierarchical manner that emphasizes the complexity of
modern and contemporary ceramic history.
deep sense of how Sundaram has travelled with ideas, materials, family and fellow artists. It starts with his very early work from his student days at London’s Slade School of Fine Art in the mid-1960s, to his return to India and his travels to South America in the 1970s; and the 1970s onwards, his experiments with mixed media, installation art, the meaning of an archive, trash and landscape art, costume design and theatre.
and Clay Art in India Since 1947,” for installation in a repurposed office
space in a non-hierarchical manner that emphasizes the complexity of
modern and contemporary ceramic history.
only does this first volume of its kind describe the life and works of a pathbreaking artist, it also seeks to relocate Padamseeʹs work in the present context, separating it from the large body of works collectively termed ʺmodernistʺ. The contributors include art historians, artists, critics, and collectors.
Edited from the book jacket: The Artful Life of R. Vijay explores the unique collaboration between an American photographer and an Indian artist. Though the American, Waswo X. Waswo, is the conceptualizer of this series, it is the miniaturist, R. Vijay, from whose perspective this book is written. Art historian Annapurna Garimella brings her passion for vernacular Indian art to scrutinize and unfold the complex terrain a traditional Indian painter has needed to navigate while entering a foreign and contemporary art oriented artistic imaginary. The worlds of R. Vijay and Waswo meet in this volume, as they do in the miniatures themselves, with a mixture of harmony and incongruity.
Speakers:
Mr. Amit Kumar Jain - Associate Vice President of Saffronart
Ms. Nancy Adajania - Cultural Theorist and Curator
Ms. Radhi Parekh - Founder of ARTISANS'
Moderated by Dr. Annapurna Garimella
Panellists: Annapurna Garimella, Maya Kóvskaya, Rahul Srivastava, Himanshu Thakkar, Kanchi Kohli, Ashok Sukumaran