Kuala Lumpur (28/07/2024) : New Bridge India, a cultural initiative by Dr.Rajashree Biswal, Art Historian, artist and Curator and Birendra Pani, contemporary visual artist, has been making various cultural endeavours to bridge different ideas, persons, community, place, institution, systems through art.As a continuation of its engagement, Dr.Rajashree Biswal delivered an important art talk titled “Maneuvering Tradition: Contemporary Visual Expressions from South Asia” on July25, 2024 at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Indian Cultural Centres, Kuala Lumpur.
This talk was a collaborative endeavour by Sutra Foundation, Malaysia, NSCBICC and New Bridge India.
Amrita Dash, Counsellor, High Commission, India, Malaysia was the Guest of Honour on this occasion.
Dash opined that ‘tradition’ is never fixed; it is always in a dynamic process of change; she emphasized on the necessity of a dialectical relationship between tradition and modernity in the present time.
Padma Shri Datuk Ramli Ibrahim, Eminent Odissi Dancer and the Founder of Sutra Foundation- a significant cultural institution in Malaysia promoting Odishan and Indian culture, emphasized on the importance of the continuity of traditional art and cultural forms; moreover, he appreciated on the possibilities of transcultural interaction and beauty of multiple identities in a globalized society.Dr.
Krishna Gopal Rampal, artists and art lovers from Asian diaspora including Malaysia Odia Association were present.
Maneuvering Tradition: Contemporary Visual Expressions from South Asia by Dr.Rajashree Biswal, Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow (USA) and CWIT Research Grant Awardee (London) is the first ever talk delivered by a woman art historian from Odisha in a South- East Asia Forum of Malaysia.Dr.Biswal in her talk highlighted that tradition is often a fraught concept.
‘Tradition needs to preserve its essence as it attributes to the identity of a community or civilization; but innovation’ and ‘critique of ‘tradition are important for continuation of any tradition in a positive spirit.
Dr.Biswal touched upon the dynamics of continuity and change in traditional art forms in Odisha.Moreover, she investigated the contemporary creative expressions of Odishan and Indian artists, and the visual expressions of the artists from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Maldives engaging with tradition through appropriation, assimilation, interrogation, or criticism in their respective socio-cultural contexts.
As Dr.Rajashree Biswal shares, some art works reinvoked ‘tradition’ in multiple layers, and recontextualized it to create a new visuality and interest towards ‘tradition in the present time; other works foregrounded the chaotic experiences of globalization, the disturbing diasporic and migrant experiences, and invoked multilayered and transmuted identity relating to tradition; question of indigenous aesthetics and the contemporaneity within indigenous art were addressed by a few works.There were other art works which emphasized on the critical interrogation of tradition: e.g., the question of ‘gender’ by debunking the conventional notion of beauty of woman, taboo related to menstruations, the veil system, marriage system and other aspects; annihilation of caste in the Hindu community; countering religious extremism, intolerance, violence, and looking towards syncretism in various communities; thus, engendering a pan- South-Asian discourse related to tradition.
Other significant collaborative event of Sutra Foundation and New Bridge India Birendra Panis solo art exhibition Neo-Urban Avatar: Mythopoesis of the Contemporary Times, was inaugurated by HE Mr Ary Norton de Murat Quintella, (Ambassador of Brazil to Malaysia) on 26 July 2024, at Sutra Gallery in Kuala Lumpur.Alejandro Roselli Londono, Ambassador of Colombia, and other distinguished persons were present on the occasion.
The exhibition will continue till 12th of July, 2024.
Internationally recognised artist Birendra Pani had his solo art exhibitions in New York, San Diego, and in India, and more than three hundred group art exhibitions in different parts of the globe.He has taken his figurative composition into the realm of post-modernism of Indian contemporary visual art.
Pani engages his viewers to expand their understanding of traditional concepts and archetypes to re-contextualise their meanings to contemporary times.
Birendra Pani shared, his art works were influenced by Hindu mythological narrative of Dasavatara but he recontextualized it to create a reflective space at the face of the imminent neo-urban deluge.
Artistic Director Padma Shri Dato Ramli Ibrahim had a banter with Birendra Pani regarding his creative process behind in his solo exhibition Neo- Urban Avatara.
This exhibition was accompanied by Dasavatara Dance in Odissi style by the Sutra Foundation Team thus engendering an interesting mythological and contemporary experience at the interface of visual-performance art.
True to the spirit of New Bridge India, this art talk and exhibition have invoked Odishan, Indian and South-Asian identities in multiple levels with the possibility of transcultural interaction.It has not only forged a new relationship with Malaysia, but strengthening Indias relationship with the South- East Asia .
