Surreal presentation

Candid confession

‘Confessions of an Evil Orientalist’ contained artworks that navigated between personal revelation and inspired fantasy and had 101 confessions which Waswo wrote and gradually took the shape of mantras.

The US-born artist has been associated with India for over ten years now. Current residing in Udaipur, Waswo has collaborated with a variety of local artists including the photo hand-colourist Rajesh (Soni). He has also produced a series of autobiographical miniature paintings in alliance with the artist R Vijay.
 
“I have got a very positive feedback from the visitors of the exhibition. Most people here see me as an orientalist. The whole idea is to raise questions in people’s mind. I want them to think what creation is all about,” explains Waswo.

Gallery Espace will also be presenting the third edition of ‘Video Wednesdays II’ today. This is the latest edition of the curatorial dialogue between Gayatri Sinha, Critical Collective and Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai. Interestingly, this is also the first endeavour by any Indian gallery to collaborate in a video art programme with a contemporary Chinese museum.

Under the present collaboration, the Indian component, curated by Gayatri reflects on very recent video art in India, and brings to the fore a concern around issues of place, politics and the location of the artist.

This time the gallery will also present China’s Yang Zhenzhong, a graduate from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, China and his video ‘I Will Die.’

The artist became famous for his video work which runs for 30 minutes, during which different people face the camera and say: ‘I Will Die.’ After an extension from 2000 to 2005, the work now has ten versions in different languages, including Chinese, French, Dutch, Korean, German, Japanese, English, Spanish, Mexican, Arabic and Italian.