Spaces for Art: Mumbai Art Block

Sunday, 11th June 9:30 am - 11:30 am Join Art & Wonderment on our first, in-person, edit of Spaces for Art, a walking tour that revisits & reveals the space(s) behind the modern & contemporary art movements in Mumbai. We start in Rampart Row in the mid-20th century with the beginnings of modern art making and display in a newly independent, post-colonial city. We “visit” spaces that have disappeared, fallen out of use or bravely continue to stay current: Our walk then ends inside the CSMVS, the 21st century city's premier museum showcasing historical artefacts, prints and paintings - sometimes, crucially, in conversation with contemporary artworks! To end our visit, we meet & hear from Jesal Thacker, curator of Rhizome Ecology, currently on view at CSMVS. In Rhizome Ecology, artworks by 14 contemporary artists are displayed across the museum's galleries, encouraging new ways of looking at the collections & spaces they are suddenly in communication with. As Jesal shares her experimental curatorial proposition with us, we further explore how and where we encounter and engage with art in the city today! Jesal Thacker is an artist by training who has independently curated several exhibitions, including Prabhakar Barwe’s retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai and New Delhi) in 2019. She is engaged in studying the history of India’s modernism with a focus on abstraction, and in renewing the art history of this period with appropriate scholarship and meticulous archives. She is a founder-director of Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation.