Block your calendars for the third edition of the Pune Biennale and its flagship contemporary art exhibition
Come January and Italian artist Massimo Bartolini will create a social sculpture, in the form of a small amphitheatre around a tree in one of Pune’s leafy gardens, Sambhaji Park. The sculpture is meant to be both symbolic and functional; even while it ensconces the tree it will become the platform for hosting short dance performances.
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Installation artist Bartolini’s creation is among those curated by Zasha Colah and Luca Cerizza for the flagship exhibition of the Pune Biennale, now in its third edition. Familiar faces around Mumbai, Colah and Cerizza have invited 21 local, Indian and international artists to be part of this exhibition, which kicks off on January 5. Titled Habit-co-Habit, the exhibition, say the curators, is based on wordplay between ‘habit’ and ‘cohabit’. “By attaching the suffix ‘co’ before ‘habit, a habit is literally turned into something else, suggesting a transformation in our own behaviour,” says Cerizza, a writer and art historian. The title is evocative of the central focus of the exhibition -- about living together in a big city or a city, like Pune, which is growing fast.
Bringing up the exhibition’s subtitle, Artistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces -- a reference to notes by French semiologist Roland Barthes for a series of seminars delivered in 1977 -- the curators have chosen eight “everyday” sites across the Deccan area of Pune, including the Pataleshwar Temple, Pune Municipal Corporation Printing Press and the Z Bridge. These spaces represented the first wave of modernisation in the development of the city at the end of the 19th century. “Rather than inviting audiences to neutral exhibition spaces, Habit-co-Habit unfolds within existing communities and readymade audiences,” says Colah, who co-founded the union of artists, Clark House, in Mumbai.
Artists -- among whom are Sarnath Banerjee, Tushar Joag and Jimmy Chishi -- have been invited to use a large variety of different mediums, from sculpture to performance, from film to drawings. The stress, therefore, is on public art that sensitively addresses the communities and architecture that surround it. U-ra-mi-li, a duo of filmmakers in Chennai, have been conducting a research around the banks of the Mutha river close to Z-Bridge to produce a new short film, for instance. “We have considered how to create a meaningful public art that avoids empty spectacularisation but tries to address different kinds of audiences. In our idea, the artistic interventions will create an itinerary of surprising encounters, suggesting alternative ways to experience everyday spaces,” says Cerizza.
Habit-co-Habit
When: January 5 - 29
Where: Across eight venues in Deccan, Pune
Visit: https://2017.punebiennale.in
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