A feminine perspective through Navjot Altaf
Updated On: 26 December, 2018 09:00 AM IST | The Guide Team
A walk through Navjot Altaf's retrospective takes participants through her dynamic career
Journeys of Transgression,'96. pic courtesy/navjot altaf
For cultural theorist and art critic Nancy Adajania, curating The Earth's Heart, Torn Out, a Navjot Altaf retrospective was as if she had been "working towards the moment for almost 20 years." Having written about the noted painter, sculptor, installation artist and filmmaker's works since the late '90s, Adajania's association with Altaf blossomed into a friendship of which studio visits, discussions and debates became an integral part.
Today, the artist and the curator will come together for a walkthrough of the retrospective, which opened earlier this month at the National Gallery of Modern Art. "Navjot strongly embodies the feminist lineage of art-making and although we do not belong to the same generation, we have been informed by the same Marxist and feminist literature. So in a way, we represent intersecting worldviews," says Adajania.
The walkthrough will historicise the various phases of Altaf's career, starting with her association with the Pragatisheel Yuva Morcha of the 1970s. "It was during this time that Navjot and her artist-husband Altaf would create posters pertaining to the political issues of the day, and put them up overnight. To bridge the gap between art and the public space, they would show their paintings and prints in labour camps, colleges, hospitals, slums and mobile creches," explains Adajania.
The exhibition then moves on to her work in Bastar in the '90s. The retrospective, however, hasn't been envisioned chronologically. "There are temporal jump cuts, just like in life itself, which proceeds by continuities and discontinuities," says Adajania.
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