Tribal World of Venkat Raman Singh Shyam
Contemporary Indian Artist Venkat Raman Singh Shyam Featured in Solo Exhibition at Brookline Arts Center
Exhibition extended through Tuesday, May 25!
The Brookline Arts Center will present the first foreign solo exhibition of one of India's leading contemporary tribal artists, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam from April 11 - May 25, 2010. "The Tribal World of Venkat Raman Singh Shyam" will be curated by John H. Bowles in the Brookline Arts Center galley. There will be an opening reception with both the curator and the artist on Sunday, April 11, from 1-3 p.m. The reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.
The Gonds first came to international attention as the native inhabitants featured in the background of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book novels; but the Gond's clan of bardic priests (known as Pardhan Gonds) have their own stories to tell and are now visually depicting them too, using various kinds of modern media. Venkat Raman Singh Shyam is a member of this tribal clan. Starting in the early 1980's, certain talented Pardhan Gonds began transforming their ritual performing arts into a new tradition of figurative and narrative visual art: using a variety of modern media (including acrylic paintings on canvas, ink drawings on paper, silkscreen prints and animated film), they have created unprecedented depictions of their natural and mythological worlds, traditional songs and oral histories.
BAC's exhibition is being shown concurrently with a larger exhibition "Painted Songs & Stories: Contemporary Pardhan Gond Art from India" at Wellesley College's Davis Museum and Cultural Center, from April 7 to June 10. These are the first two exhibitions of contemporary Pardhan Gond art in America.
According to John H. Bowles, the curator of both exhibitions: "While the Davis Museum exhibition shows selected works by eight artists, the Brookline Art Center exhibit focuses on the unique accomplishments of one. Visitors can thus appreciate both the stylistic traits shared by many artists working within an 'ethnic' art movement, as well as explore in greater depth the individual achievements of a particular artist."
“Venkat Raman Singh Shyam is remarkable in his range of styles, media and subject matter,” according to Bowles. “They include depictions of nature, local folklore and traditional creation myths, as well as more contemporary, global events, such as the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which he personally witnessed."
While Venkat has previously shown his work in museums and galleries throughout India and in Europe, this will be his first foreign solo exhibition. Brookline Arts Center Board member and founder Mim Berliner adds, “We are very proud to host this international exhibition. The arts center was founded to bring people together through the medium of art, and I think Venkat’s lively work will be readily enjoyed by our students and the Brookline, Boston and surrounding communities."
Visitors to The Tribal World of Venkat Raman Singh Shyam may also be interested in a new opera based on India's Bandit Queen, being presented in April 2010 at Boston's Tsai Performance Center by Boston Musica Viva.