Kolkata: Experimenter art gallery hosted the 9th edition of its Experimenter Curators’ Hub

The Experimenter Curators' Hub was founded in 2009 by husband-wife duo, Priyanka and Prateek Raja of Kolkata Experimenter gallery. The yearly, three-day conference is attended by artists, scholars, students, and art enthusiasts who get to learn and participate in the discourse on curatorial practice and exhibition-making through critical discussion and debate. Every year, sessions are presented by 10 stalwarts of the global art industry, curators of most noteworthy exhibitions and biennales in the recent past who break down the thinking behind their practice. These hour-long sessions include monologues as well as intimate, closed-format Q&A and dialogue; they're conducted in the heritage bungalow of Hindustan road branch, which serves as an Experimenter gallery's space.

The Main Premise

While there is no theme for Experimenter Curators' Hub, the founders work with a certain premise each year and invite curators accordingly. Premises for previous years have included major world exhibitions and even public art projects. This year's edition of the Experimenter Curator's Hub had the premise of dissent and moderator Natasha Ginwala launched the Hub's Day 3 proceedings with an apt quote by Arundhati Roy: "Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe." Prateek Raja had alluded to this in his introductory remarks on day one. “There is a continued need for making available a platform for contrarian ideas,” he said. “More so, in polarising times such as ours.” Meanwhile, Priyanka Raja declared it “a year to resist.”

A Unique Platform

When Priyanka and Prateek started the event in 2010, it was the first of its kind in Asia. “We had just got back from the India Art Fair in January and felt there was no forum for curators to come together, learn and share. Everyone worked in silos and we wanted to change this by building a forum in a model we could sustain,” says Priyanka Raja. “We discussed the idea one Sunday morning, drew up a list of curators and emailed them in the afternoon. By evening all of them confirmed saying they'd attend irrespective of whether we got our funding or not.” Today, the event has a niche but strong following, with consistent attendees over the years and even a waiting list. What makes it special is that it gives the audience access to visionary and world-famous curators from countries like England, Germany, Nepal, India and more.

What You Missed

The 9th edition this year saw exciting presentations some of which came with disruptive messages and enabled passionate debates. All 10 curators are highly respected in their fields—read below for highlights of the event:

1. 安妮塔·杜布是现代印度艺术家塔尔ked about her curation of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2018. There was much speculation if her curation was going to be political in nature considering the theme for that edition was “Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life.” Dube's curation offered a solution to our hyper-connected yet isolated lives by attempting to build a sense of community and comradeship through sharing. This was meant to be an alternative to the sense of community currently being created by majoritarian movements through violence and divide. To illustrate her point, Dube quoted activist and writer, Emma Goldmann: “If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.”

2. Shaina Anand, is an artist, filmmaker, and founder of CAMP—a transdisciplinary media studio based in Mumbai. She gave a heartfelt presentation that touched on the reality of how practitioners in South Asia were often called upon to play multiple roles such as those of an artist, architect, and curator. In that context, she emphasised the need for shared generosity and shared curiosity. Anand also discussed her work with CAMP's various projects like online archives pad.ma and Indiancine.ma.

3. Naomi Beckwith, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, presented a session titled “Transcultural Formations.” Beckwith set the tone by questioning how ethical the funding received by art institutions is and also called for greater representation by developing “new languages, new thoughts, and new structures.” She named Nigerian curators Okwui Enwezor and Bisi Silva as the ones who helped her become a reformed pan-Africanist; she now loves the work of black diaspora, women, and artists of colour. She said true representation means delving deeper into structural issues and the mode of production but also finding new voices that tell different stories. Beckwith used two exhibitions that she had curated to exemplify her points: The Freedom Principle: Experiments In Art and Music 1965 to Now and the solo exhibition of Howardena Pindell, an artist, and curator.

4. Devika Singh, the Curator of International art at Tate Modern, London used two previous exhibitions that she had curated (Planetary Planning, at the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 and Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan currently showing at Kettle's Yard, UK) to talk about networks of exchange and how we need to change the way we think about cosmopolitanism. A major challenge while staging these shows was how to curate art for an audience that was not familiar with the underlying issues. She responded to Beckwith's assertion from the previous day: “art historians and curators are different breeds” by stating that “art history and curatorial practice needs to go together.”

5. Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati is the co-founder of the Nepal Picture Library and is also a co-founder and Festival Director of Photo Kathmandu. Gurung Kakshapati discussed her work on the Feminist Memory Project, an index of the lives of Nepali women and the attempt to render them visible. In the Q&A session, she discussed the #MeToo movement in the creative arts in Nepal and the formulation of a code of conduct for Photo Kathmandu which aimed to bring victims and perpetrators to a common platform.

In the end, the Rajas emphasised that these efforts would not be possible without institutional support. Experimenter Curators' Hub 2019 is organised by Experimenter Learning Program Foundation in partnership with Motwani Jadeja Foundation and is supported by Australia Council for the Arts, U.S. Consulate General Kolkata, Goethe Institut, as well as TAKE magazine (media partner).

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