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Gauri Gill
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Photographer Gauri Gill’s images capture the quiet moments of life, whether intimate exchanges between people or cityscapes shot in the dead of night, which are often overlooked in the chaos of daily existence. At the same time, these photographs take on the mantle of microcosms that illuminate macro or larger issues like questions of rural and cross cultural identity, migration and assimilation, and urban transitions and decay. Although...
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Photographer Gauri Gill’s images capture the quiet moments of life, whether intimate exchanges between people or cityscapes shot in the dead of night, which are often overlooked in the chaos of daily existence. At the same time, these photographs take on the mantle of microcosms that illuminate macro or larger issues like questions of rural and cross cultural identity, migration and assimilation, and urban transitions and decay. Although seeming to employ classic documentary approaches like working within genres such as portraiture and cityscapes, she often breaks these conventions - using a snapshot aesthetic, as seen in her work 'The Americans', or making references to local vernacular practices, as seen in her work from Rajasthan, 'Notes from the Desert'.
The series was drawn from more than ten years of visiting nomadic and migrant rural communities in Western Rajasthan. The exhibition was primarily structured around portraits, some candid and spontaneous, many posed in collaboration with their subjects.
“To set up a photographic project in rural Rajasthan, in black and white, stretching over a decade, goes against the grain of several stereotypes; and signals the maturing of a ‘voice’ within the corpus of Photography in India. Defrocked of its color and tourism potential, Rajasthan, is scoured at the nomadic margins; revealing lives in transition: epic cycles of birth, death, drought, flood, celebration and devastation, through which they pass. The extremity of the situation requires no illustration or pictorialism- those vexed twins of the colonial legacy- especially from an insider, or the one who is led by the hand. Her subjects take her into their world, and she goes there like Alice. Her method embraces ‘Time’- which does not ‘naturally’ exist inside a photograph, beyond the epiphany and commemoration of a moment (photography’s melancholy and limitation is precisely this)- within a structure of intimacy and relationships that unravel their mysteries slowly.”
Excerpted from Anita Dube’s notes on the show in Delhi, published in Art India and Du magazine.
Her first solo show, exhibited in 2008/09, and called ‘The Americans,’ was a diaristic account of Indian immigrants in the US, including her extended family and friends, as well as a retelling of Robert Frank’s book of the same name made in the 1950s.
“Given Gill’s explicit invocation of Frank (apparent, as I’ve suggested at so many different levels), how should we understand the object of her critique? Does she intend to present Indo-Americans as part of a liberating counter-culture? Is she mounting a critique in part of a US consumerist dream that fails to deliver for most Indian-Americans? This seems implicit in a number of powerful images which take the viewer very close to the quotidian routines of low-paid manual work (for instance the moving diptych showing Laljibhai and Pushpa Patel cleaning the Days Inn West in Mississippi). But is she also mounting a critique from within of aspects of the Indic tradition, of targets such as religious orthodoxy, Bollywood and patriarchy? The display of cut-out victims from a benefit function for the subjects of domestic violence suggests this quite clearly. The serried ranks of Bollywood videos with peeling labels set alongside racks of salwar kameez may be intended to communicate the routinized repetitive actions of diaspora nostalgia. Or it may be intended to record its tenacity – its steadfastness, and endurance, in this new context. Such ambivalence, of course – and the power it gives the viewer to come to their own conclusions - is a considerable part of the power that Gauri Gill’s project offers. Like Robert Frank’s work, her images are not easily “selected and interpreted”, but they speak of things that are there: “anywhere and everywhere”.”
Excerpted from Christopher Pinney’s talk at the show at Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago.
Some of Gill’s other photographic series include one of urban landscapes taken in and around various cities in India, often during the night; the work has been exhibited both as part of the series 'Nizamuddin at Night', and more recently, 'Rememory'.
Gauri Gill received a BFA in Applied Art at the Delhi College of Art, New Delhi, a BFA in Photography at the Parsons School of Design, New York and an MFA in Art at Stanford University, California.
Solo exhibitions include: ‘What Remains’ at Green Cardamom Gallery, London (2011); ‘Notes from the Desert’ at Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi; Matthieu Foss Gallery, Mumbai; Focus Gallery, Chennai; Urmul Setu, Lunkaransar (2010-11); ‘The Americans’ at Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi; Thomas Welton Art Gallery, Stanford University; the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago; Bose Pacia Gallery, Kolkata and New York; Mississauga Central Library, Mississauga (2008-2011).
Group exhibitions include: ‘Lines of Control’ at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University; Nasher Museum, Duke University (2012); The Grange Prize Exhibition’ at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2011); 'The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India' at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2011); 'Generation in Transition', at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2011);'Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh', Whitechapel Gallery, London and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2010); 'The Self and the Other: Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography', Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona (2009); 'Shifting Shapes: Unstable Signs', Yale Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven (2009); 'Public Places, Private Spaces', Newark Museum, New Jersey (2007); as well as two person shows with Tomoko Yoneda, Lucy Mackintosh Gallery, Lausanne (2009); and Sunil Gupta, IIC, New Delhi (2007).
She is a founder and co-editor at Camerawork Delhi, a free newsletter about independent photography, from Delhi, where she lives. Gill received the Grange Prize for contemporary photography in 2011.
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Born
1970
Chandigarh
Education
2002 M.F.A. Photography Stanford University, California
1994 B.F.A. Photography, Parsons School of Design, New York.
1992 B.F.A. Applied Art, Delhi College of Art, New Delhi
Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2012 'Balika Mela', Nature Morte, New...
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2012 'Balika Mela', Nature Morte, New Delhi
2011 'What Remains', Green Cardamom Gallery, London
2010-11 'Notes from the Desert: 1999-2010', Nature Morte, New Delhi; Matthieu Foss Gallery, Mumbai; Focus Gallery, Chennai; Urmul Setu, Lunkaransar
2008-11 ‘The Americans’, at Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery; Bose Pacia, Kolkata ; Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi; Matthieu Foss Gallery, Mumbai ; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago ; and Bose Pacia Gallery, New York
Selected Group Exhibitions
2014 'Invisible Cities', Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
2013 'Poses and Views', Nature Morte, Berlin
2012 'The Needle on the Gauge', presented by Adelaide Festival Centre and the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia at Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA), Adelaide
2012 'Cynical Love: Life in the Everyday', Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi
2011 'Staging Selves: Power, Performativity & Portraiture', Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2011 'Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You', Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
2010 'US Today: After Katrina', Institut d'art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, Lyon
2010 'Light Drifts' Matthieu Foss Gallery, Mumbai2010 'Docu Tour', Gallery BMB, Mumbai
2009 ‘Outside In: Indian Art Abroad’, Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Idaho
2009 ‘The Astonishment of Being’, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata
2009 ‘Shifting Shapes –Unstable Signs', Yale Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven
2008 ‘The Nature of the City', Religare Art Gallery, New Delhi
2008 ‘Zeitgeist', Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi
2007 'City Cite Site', Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi
2007 'Photoquai', Musee Quai Branly, Paris
2007 'Gill and Gupta', India International Center, New Delhi
2007 'I Fear, I Believe, I Desire', Gallery Espace, New Delhi
2002 'Award Winners Show', Fifty Crows Foundation, San Francisco
1998 'In Black and White' - What has Independence meant for Women, (Point of View/Ford Foundation) Admit One Gallery, New York
Joint Exhibitions
2009 ‘Rememory', with Tomoko Yoneda at Lucy Mackintosh Gallery, Lausanne
Participations
2013 'A Photograph is Not an Opinion – Contemporary Photography by Women', Terrace Gallery at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai as part of Focus Photography Festival
2012 'There Was A Country Where They Were All Thieves', Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam
2012 'The Portrait: Contemporary Indian Photography', Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle
2012 'Art for Humanity', Coomaraswamy Hall, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai
2012 'Lines of Control', co-organized by Green Cardamom at Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca
2011 'Step Across This Line: Contemporary Art from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh', Asia House, London
2011 The Grange Prize Exhibition', Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
2011 'The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art Of India', Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
2011 'Generation in Transition: New Art from India', Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warszawa, Poland
2011 'Homespun', Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi
2010 ‘Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh', Whitechapel Gallery, London; Exhibition travels to Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland
2009 ‘The Self and The Other - Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography', La Virreina Centre de la Imatge of the Institut de Cultura (City Council of Barcelona), Palau de La Virreina. Exhibition travels to Atrium in Vitoria
2007 'Public Places, Private Spaces' - Contemporary Photography and Video Art in India', The Newark Museum, New Jersey
2005 'Women Photographers from SAARC countries', Italian Cultural Center, New Delhi
2008 'Click! Indian Photography Now', Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and London
2007 'Autoportraits' Photographic portfolio of 12 Indian artists, Khoj at Freize Art Fair, London
1995 Alliance Francaise Prize Winners Exhibition, Exhibition traveled all over India
Honours and Awards
2011 Grange Prize, Canada
2002 Fifty Crows Award (formerly a project of Mother Jones magazine), San Francisco
2001 Anita Squires Fowler Memorial Fund in Photography, Stanford University
2000 Nathan Oliviera Fellowship, Stanford University
1995 Prizewinner, Alliance Francaise National Photography Contest New Delhi
2011 Grange Prize, Canada
2002 Fifty Crows Award (formerly a project of Mother Jones magazine), San Francisco
2001 Anita Squires Fowler Memorial Fund in Photography, Stanford University
2000 Nathan Oliviera Fellowship, Stanford University
1995 Prizewinner, Alliance Francaise National Photography Contest New Delhi
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