CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ART OTHER REALITIES , MARG PUBLICATION, HARDCOVER,2002

This volume provides a much-needed perspective on contemporary Indian art, offering a dynamic rather than a static way of approaching the subject. The essays, written by scholars, deal with questions which, though often asked, remain open-ended. While the works of individual artists are discussed, much of the debate centres on the contentious subject of modernism in Indian art, in its Eurocentric, Asian, contextual, or multicultural form.

This preoccupation with modernism, gives way in the 1980s to the generating of a greater expressiveness about one’s own reality, the plight of the common man, the feminist, and the marginalized through pluralistic modes: installations, earthworks, conceptual, performance, and video art. The changing parameters of postmodernism and diasporic art are also dealt with.

Yashodhara Dalmia is an art historian and curator based in New Delhi. She curated the inaugural show of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai in 1996-97 on the Progressive Artists’ Group.