Art and Architecture: Postdate | Rina Banerjee, Beth Citron, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Jodi Throckmorton | An Art Book Series Eve

FREE - Auditorium doors open at 5:30 p.m.

This event celebrates the publication of Postdate: Photography and Inherited History in India and the exhibition of the same title, on view at the San Jose Museum of Art, California, this summer and then on national tour.

In considering the role of the artist as researcher, collector, activist, and documentarian, this panel examines the complex relationship between traditions of representation in India and contemporary practices of image-making. The panelists also discuss the challenges for artists who are both committed to located histories in India and an engagement in transnational discourse.

Two generations after the exultation of Independence and the concurrent horrors of Partition, contemporary artists mine the uneasy history of photography in India as a means to challenge outmoded narratives, share hidden stories, and make personal connections with tradition.

Taking history into their own hands, figures such as Nandan Ghiya, Gauri Gill, Jitish Kallat, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya, Pushpamala N., Raqs Media Collective, Vivan Sundaram, and Surekha draw on a diverse range of sources, from ethnographic photographs made at the height of the British occupation to hand-painted studio portraits and stills from Bollywood movies. Weighing the influence of the global against the draw of the local, these artists embrace tradition and innovation as covalent rather than competitive forces. Marking the US debut of several of the featured artists, Postdate: Photography and Inherited History in India deepens our understanding of the legacy of colonialism and celebrates new and socially engaged modes of image-making in South Asia.

Copies of Postdate (University of California Press, 2015) are available for purchase and signing at the end of event.

The Indian born, New York City based artist Rina Banerjee has a love of materials, heritage textiles, ethnicity and fashion, colonial objects and furnishings, historical architecture, and their ability to disguise, animate, locate their inherent meanings in her art work. Banerjee was born in Kolkata in 1963 and moved with her family to the UK and then to USA. She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Polymer Engineering at Case Western University in 1993 after took a job as a polymer research chemist consulting for Dow Chemical, Nasa, etc., at Pennsylvania State University. After a few years she abandoned the sciences to pursue her art, and completed the MFA degree program at Yale University School of Art in the area of Painting in 1995. Banerjee currently has a solo exhibition on view at Jacob Lewis Gallery in Chelsea from April 10 to June 6, 2015.

Beth Citron is the Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Rubin Museum in New York. In 2014 she organized Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India and Witness at a Crossroads: Photographer Marc Riboud in Asia. For the museum, she also organized a three-part exhibition series Modernist Art from India (2011-13) and, with Rahaab Allana of the Alkazi Foundation, co-organized Allegory and Illusion: Early Portrait Photography from South Asia (2013). She has contributed to Artforum, ArtIndia, and other publications, and published Bhupen Khakhar's 'Pop' in India, 1970-72 in the Summer 2012 issue of ArtJournal. She completed a Ph.D. on Contemporary Art in Bombay, 1965-1995 in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, and has taught in the Art History Department at New York University, from which she also earned a B.A. in Fine Arts. 

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s recent exhibitions include SepiaEYE, NYC, the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, Guangzhou Biennial of Photography, China, Tang Museum, NY and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and a solo exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum of Art, Toronto, Canada in 2015. Grants recently supporting Matthew‘s work include a 2012 Fulbright fellowship, the John Gutmann fellowship, MacColl Johnson fellowship and Rhode Island State Council of the Arts fellowships. She has been an artist in residence at the Yaddo Colony and the MacDowell Colony. Matthew’s work is included in the book BLINK from Phaidon, Self-Portraits and Home Truths: Motherhood, Photography and Loss by Susan Bright and The Digital Eye by Sylvia Wolf. Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island and Director of the URI Center for the Humanities. Matthew is represented by SepiaEYE, New York City.

Jodi Throckmorton came to PAFA from the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, where she served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Prior to that, Throckmorton was the Associate Curator at the San Jose Museum of Art. She holds an MFA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University, and a BA in Art History and French from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Throckmorton co-organized, with Harry Philbrick, Dive Deep: Eric Fischl and the Process of Painting, which was on exhibit at PAFA and the San Jose Museum of Art (2012-13). Other current and prior projects of Throckmorton’s include Postdate: Photography and Inherited History in India (2015); Bruce Conner: Somebody Else's Prints (2014); Free Texts: Stephanie Syjuco (2014); Questions from the Sky: New Work by Hung Liu (2013); Ranu Mukherjee: Telling Fortunes (2012); Renegade Humor (2012); This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown (2011); and The Modern Photographer: Observation and Intention (2010). 

In its seventh year the program series An Art Book, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a celebration of the essential importance and beauty of art books. The events showcase book presentations and discussions by world renowned artists, critics, curators, gallerists, historians and writers.

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