In the early 1990s, India underwent concurrent social and cultural upheavals along with an economic transformation that centred around two major historical events. On 6 December 1992, Hindu fundamentalists demolished the Babri Masjid, a historic mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh in north India. This led to communal riots across the nation, especially in the city of Bombay (now Mumbai), and a subsequent rise of Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment. At the same time, through a series of reforms termed ‘liberalisation’, India’s economy opened up to the world. These critical transformations underlie the extraordinary commercial and — to a lesser extent — institutional art world ‘boom’ that took place between 2005–2008, followed by a precipitous crash in late 2008, when a global recession took place.
During this period and subsequently, contemporary Indian art became more fully integrated into global discourses, through varied thematic and methodological approaches. Over time, the practices of contemporary Indian artists came to be legible to both local viewers in India and global audiences. While there are many artists central to this boom, some of whom are addressed elsewhere in the Course, in this lesson we will examine four artists whose work took off during this time and who became synonymous with Indian contemporary art in the 2000s, and largely remain so today.
We’ll explore how their practices have engaged with the discourses of the contemporary moment, offering sustained critiques on issues such as capitalism, femininity, border conflicts and more.