Ishara Art Foundation presents Pattern, the first solo exhibition of artist Navjot Altaf in the Arabian Peninsula. Featuring site-specific installations, sculptures, videos, drawings and photo prints, the exhibition foregrounds Navjot’s longstanding commitment to issues of climate-change, ecology and feminism and the challenges they face in the digital age.
Navjot Altaf’s practice stands at the intersection of art and activism. With a career spanning over five decades, she is among the leading voices of her generation to regard art as a medium of social change. Formerly based in Bombay, Navjot relocated to Bastar in the rural districts of Central India during the late 1990’s to work with indigenous artists and communities that have borne witness to the enormous scale of deforestation, mining, pollution and displacement. Through collaborations with artists, activists, workers and organisations, her projects trace the complex connections between human exploitation and environmental crises that lie at the heart of climate change today.
Pattern presents works by Navjot created since 2015, the year of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and the Paris Climate Accords. These events marked a watershed moment in announcing a global agreement towards the mitigation of carbon emission levels among nearly 200 countries. Since then, there has been a dramatic enhancement of visual representation of climate change in mainstream media, using new technologies and real-time data. Navjot’s exhibition at Ishara juxtaposes the new and traditional forms of representing environmental crises to critically reflect on the way we think about the future of the planet and society.
Navjot Altaf: Pattern is curated by Sabih Ahmed, Associate Director and Curator at the Ishara Art Foundation. The exhibition will be accompanied by the launch of her new two-volume book titled ‘Navjot at Work’ and ‘Artist’s Notes’; physical and virtual tours; educational and public programmes; a newly commissioned text by Zasha Colah and artist conversations over the duration of the exhibit.
About the Artist
Navjot Altaf was born in 1949 and currently lives and works between Mumbai and Bastar. Since the 1970’s, her practice hasnegotiated various disciplinary boundariesinvolving painting, photography, sculpture, installation, video, site-specific works, research and activism. Collaboration liesat the heart of her artistic methodology, extended through dialogues, workshops and readings of historical and contemporary art, literature, film and cultural theory.In 1997,Navjot relocated to Bastar, a district inCentral India, where she co-foundedDIAA (Dialogue Interactive Artists Association), an artists’ run organization along withindigenous artists Rajkumar Korram, Shantibai, and Gessuram Viswakarma. Her work withlocalcommunities has attempted to find ways to understandandcreatesustainable living, advocating justice, and bringing attention to the social and ecological crises in the region through their own voices and narratives.Navjot has had solo exhibitions in institutions and galleries including thePAV Parco Arte Vivente (Turin), The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum (Florida), Chemould Prescott Road Art Gallery (Mumbai) The Guild Gallery (Mumbai,Alibaugand New York),Talwar Gallery (New York and Delhi)and Sakshi Gallery (Mumbai).Herretrospective was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai) in 2018curated by Nancy Adajania.She has also participated in various curated group shows around the world including the Tate Modern (London), House of World culture (Berlin),National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Korea),Newark Museum and Minneapolis Institute of Arts(USA),The Grand Curtis (Liège),and the Kiran Nader Museum of Art (New Delhi). Her work has been presented as part of the CuritibaBiennial,Yinchuan Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Sydney-International festival of Contemporary Art Biennale, HavanaBiennale and the first Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale.A number of her collaborative and site-specific projects can be found in Kondagaon,Chhattisgarh, India.Navjot’s works are part of a number of public and private art collections including National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi and Mumbai), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Fukuoka), Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), PSA Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai), PAV-Parco Arte Vivente (Turin), RPG Collection (Mumbai) and The Ishara Art Foundation and The Prabhakar Collection.
You can find more info on the exhibition here www.ishara.org
Visit the exhibition from 14th September – 9th December 2022
