Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Mumbai in collaboration with CSMVS invites you to “BRAIDED HISTORIES”– a conversation between the artist and designer Andrea Anastasio and the poet and curator Ranjit Hoskote on the occasion of BINARY CODEX, a retrospective of Anastasio’s work across four decades in art, design and craft, in Indian and Italian contexts.
Date: Wednesday: 26 April 2023
Venue: CSMVS Children’s Museum Amphitheatre
Time: 5:00 pm onwards
Topic: Art/Design Talk
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
RANJIT HOSKOTE Is a poet, cultural theorist, translator and curator based in Mumbai, India. His eight collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts (Penguin, 2006), Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin, 2018, published in the UK by Arc as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs, 2020, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021), and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press, 2023). His translation of a 14th-century Kashmiri woman mystic’s poetry has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011). He is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2012). With Ilija Trojanow, Hoskote wrote a study of transcultural connections in history, Kampfabsage (Blessing, 2007; in English as Confluences: Forgotten Histories from East and West, Yoda, 2012).
Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale as Everyone Agrees, It’s About to Explode (2011) and was co-curator of the 7th Gwangju Biennale. He has curated more than 50 exhibitions of Indian and global art since 1994. These include retrospectives and deep-focus introspective of major artists such as Atul Dodiya (Japan Foundation Asia Center, Tokyo 2001, and National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi 2013), Jehangir Sabavala (National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai 2005 and New Delhi 2006), M F Husain (Mathaf Museum of Modern Art, Doha 2019), and F N Souza (CSMVS Museum, Mumbai 2022). He recently co-curated “Sangam/Confluence”, the opening exhibition at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre.
ANDREA ANASTASIO The artist got his MA in Indology at the University of Venice Cá Foscari. He then developed furthermore his studies on Indian Art and Architecture. Since the ’80 he has travelled throughout the sub-continent, collaborating with Indian artists and architects as well as Indian publishing houses. He curated the monographic issue on India by ABITARE magazine in the year 2000 and collaborated with the making of the Indian Highway exhibition on Indian Contemporary Art that was held at the museum MAXXI in Rome in 2012 (essay on catalogue) and reviewed for Giornale dell’Arte, “Hub India”, the largest exhibition on Contemporary Indian Art ever held in Italy in Turin in 2021.
In 1999 he conceived and designed Cinnamon, the very first design concept store with an art gallery in India, in Bengaluru with Abhishek and Radhika Poddar, who later founded MAP (Museum of Art and Photography). He has lectured at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, at the School of Architecture and at the Sir J.J School of Applied Art in Mumbai, at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, at Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai, at the Italian Culture Centre in Delhi. He collaborates with GallerySke in Bengaluru and in Delhi, where his work is exhibited since 2006. He exhibited at Jehangir Gallery in Mumbai at the Habitat Centre in Delhi and at the JKK in Jaipur. His work has been always stressing the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches, underlying the importance of craftsmanship. He regularly holds workshops around the world on traditional craftsmanship and innovation.