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Archana Hande
Born: Bangalore 1970
Lives and works in Mumbai and Bangalore
Education:
1986-1991 B.F.A, Printmaking, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan
1991-1993 M.F.A, Printmaking, M.S. University, Baroda
Solo Exhibitions:
2008 All is Fair in Magic White, Nature Morte, New Delhi
Relics of Grey, School of Art & Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi
2007 Relics of Grey, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai
2005 www dot arrange your own marriage dot com, Part-1, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai
1999 The Veil-Shop, Sumukha Art Gallery, Bangalore and Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai
1998 Play House, Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai
Selected Group Exhibitions
2008 Farewell to Post-Colonialism, The 3rd Guangzhou Triennial; curated by Gao Shiming,
Sarat Maharaj, and Chang Tsong-zung. Guangdong Museum of Art, China
Gunjifa, international portfolio exchange project, organised by CHHAA.
VIDEOMIX INDIA, Contemporary Indian Art in La Casa Encendida, Madrid
2007 India: Bollywood and Living Gods, The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm
Horn Please: Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art, curated by Bernhard Fibicher
and Suman Gopinath, Kunstmuseum Bern
Tales of Patachitrakar & Victoria TV, film screening at Gävle Konstcentrum, Sweden and
007 Gallery, Oslo
2006 India Express, Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland
Rethinking Nordic Colonialism / A Postcolonial Exhibition, curated by Frederikke Hansen
and Tone Olaf Nielsen (Kuratorisk Aktion) for Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Finland
Women in Contemporary Printmaking, curated by Kavita Shah; Baroda, Mumbai,
Bangalore, Hyderabad
2005 Are we like this only?, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; curated by Vidya Shivadas
Art Circus, Yokohama Triennial, Yokohama, Japan
2004-07 The Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth;
Asia Society and Museum, New York; Tamayo Museum, Mexico City;
Museum of Contemporary Art (Marco), Monterrey; The University of California,
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; National Gallery of
Modern Art, Mumbai & New Delhi
2003 Sites of Recurrence, exhibition and workshop organised by Boras Konstmuseum,
Sweden at Dakshinachitra, Chennai
Sites of Recurrence II, Boras Konstmuseum, Sweden
Awards
2007-2008 Majlis Fellowship for Visual Arts, Mumbai
2000-2001 Charles Wallace India Trust Arts Awards, Residency in Glasgow School of Art, UK
1995-97 Junior Fellowship, Human Resource Development, Government of India
Websites
www.arrangeurownmarriage.com
www.archanahande.com
Archana Hande: All is Fair in Magic White
Nature Morte Annex: February 27 - March 21, 2009
Nature Morte will present new works by the Mumbai-based artist Archana Hande. Entitled "All is Fair in Magic White," the exhibition is primarily pictures made by the traditional method of block-printing on fabric with a twist. The artist has carved various characters, symbols, icons and scenographic elements from wooden blocks and combines them into rebus-like pictures. These are both self-contained pictures and long, narrative scrolls, both of which feed into an animated video which will be on view. The works employ traditional Indian picture-making and decorative techniques while the subject matter is wholly contemporary, speaking of the dual strains of urbanisation and globalization taking place throughout India today.
Archana Hande studied at the Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan and the Faculty of Fine Arts at M.S. University, Baroda and currently lives in Mumbai. She has had solo shows at Gallery Chemould and Lakeeren in Mumbai and Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore. Her works have also been included in important group shows such as the Guangzhou Triennale in China, the Yokohama Triennale in Japan, "India Express" at the Helsinki City Art Museum, "Horn Please" at the Kunstmuseum of Bern, and "The Edge of Desire" at the Asia Society in New York. This is her first show with Nature Morte and a parallel exhibition of works entitled "Relics of Grey" will be held at the School of Art and Aesthetics, Jawahar Nehru University in New Delhi from the 7th to the 30th of March;
Nature Morte Annex is located at A-9, Shivalik Main Road, New Delhi-110017.
For more information and press photographs, please contact the Gallery Manager, Geeta Bajaj, at (011) 41740215 or Rajeev Dhawan at (011) 29561596. For Gallery direction call contact Monica Singh at (011) 46557472. or email at: info@naturemorte.com.
Nupur Jain, a research scholar at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU has written about Hande's project:
"All is Fair in Magic White" is a satirical account of aspiring, tumultuous, dirty and shockingly populated Bombay and its hope for a picture-postcard conversion into a global megapolis of the future. A touch of historicity complicates this troublesome vision by raising questions of power, class and race. A deceptively simple account of popular notions of female beauty reveals not only deeply entrenched cultural and economic inequalities in the post colonial city but also comments on disturbing repercussions of attempts at molding Bombay to resemble those cities that are now discovering far bigger problems of their own. An experiment that ingeniously employs traditional block printing techniques as aesthetic principles governing the storytelling art of this digital film, Archana Hande comments on life and art. She criticizes the Indian, still post-colonial condition that stimulates an incessant need for magic potions that some think might help whiten existence in her part of the world.