Purdah 2.0: Body Matters The Second Annual Arts Exhibition at Engendered
June 25th-July 16th, 2009 | Halvai Gallery, 75 Grand Street, NY Opening Reception: June 30, 2009 7 p.m.
After the inaugural edition of Purdah – the unprecedented transcultural exhibition on art, gender and sexuality last year, Engendered presents Purdah 2.0: Body Matters.
Curated In Two Parts by: Amina Begum Ahmed & Priyanka Mathew
Exhibition Director : Myna Mukherjee
Body Matters is a contemporary & provocative exploration both of why the body matters and what matters of the body are, have been and could become. Across cultures, how do we find a visual and aesthetic language to engage with the body as simultaneously a site of refuge, resistance, tradition, freedom, sorrow, solace, desire, pain, rebellion, and rage? Body Matters investigates the body as a site for contestations of power & violence, perception & reality, memory & loss, and finally, station & displacement - especially within urban ecologies and the ever morphous shifting boundaries of personal and political geographies.
Ahmed brings together diverse artists whose stories and experiences form a narrative that excavates, personalizes and reclaims the 'body' that has been subsumed by the dominant normative . On the other hand, Mathew's curation of artists explores the human form as an agent/catalyst to dissect political, social and metaphysical dialogues on sexuality, gender and the relationships in the grey areas that don’t qualify neatly in either category.
Body Matters brings together figurative, conceptual, experiential and also site specific works by some of the most leading, iconic and emergent transcultural artists from India, Pakistan, Iran, U.S & China.
