Interviews

From Writing to Seeing and Back

Arshad Hakim, Vaishnavi Kambadur & Samira Bose

Arshad Hakim, Vaishnavi Kambadur, and Samira Bose discuss their curatorial collaboration between a museum and an archive for MAP's latest exhibition on K. G. Subramanyan's artworks and writings.

This conversation between co-curators Arshad Hakim, Vaishnavi Kambadur (MAP) and Samira Bose (AAA in India) is an extension of the online exhibition Bahurupee in the Panorama: Writing and Artwork of K. G. Subramanyan. Here, they discuss the process and methods behind the exhibition, and the collaboration between a museum and an archive. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. It was first published in AAA’s online journal, IDEAS.
On Subramanyan as an Educator and Writer
Arshad Hakim (AH): To begin, I’ll go with what is most evident: We know that K. G. Subramanyan as a figure is extremely important within the subcontinent and a lot of work has already been done on him, in terms of his writings, his practice, and his pedagogy. What were your impulses to work with Subramanyan’s artworks and his archive, and how do you see this collaboration between two institutions adding to the already existing discourse on Subramanyan?

Vaishnavi Kambadur (VK): When we were brainstorming amongst the team about how to conceptualise the exhibition, I remember going on Asia Art Archive’s website and seeing so many archives of artists like Nilima Sheikh, Jyoti Bhatt, and Ratan Parimoo—and Subramanyan’s artworks in MAP’s collection had a lot of connections with them. From the 1960s to 2000s, and across mediums like terracotta and gouache on paper, the artworks covered many aspects of Subramanyan’s work.

Having said that, we wanted to look at something that was different from the pre-existing pedagogy and maybe the hope was to produce something that wasn’t done before in an online space. In a sense, we wanted the museum collection and artist’s archive to inform each other and co-exist in this exhibition.

Samira Bose (SB): Yes, we�

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