FICA is pleased to announce the recipients of the Emerging Artist Award 2011 -
Sujith SN and Charmi Gada Shah
The Award is one of the three annual support programmes offered by FICA. Initiated in 2007, it seeks to promote young artists studying or practicing in India who demonstrate extraordinary skill and promise in the visual arts. The EAA 2011 is presented in collaboration with Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, New Delhi, and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, with additional support from Ms. Shalini Passi. The recipients of the award receive a ninety-day residency in Switzerland in summer 2012, and an exhibition at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi in August 2013.
The Jury: The recipients were selected by a jury that consisted of artist Bharti Kher, curator Gayatri Sinha, photographer and curator Sunil Gupta, Chandrika Grover of Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with Swiss curator Nadia Schneider Willen, and Radhika Chopra and Vidya Shivadas of FICA.
Sujith SN creates artworks that map out how spatial rhythms and territorial boundaries of modern urban landscapes inevitably lead to violence. His work addresses the relationship between politics and architecture and its effect on modern societies, and specifically how modern architecture has come shape the political, social, and cultural behaviors of its inhabitants. Having grown up in various cities in South India during a period of rapid urbanisation his practice is informed greatly by these spatial transformations. His work is further is inspired by his training as a draughtsman in the construction industry. Sujith received his BFA from College of Fine Arts, Trichur, and MFA from the Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts, Performing Arts and Communication in the University of Hyderabad and . His works have been exhibited as a part of various group shows including The Map is not Territory at Lattitude 28, Relative Visa at Bodhi, Indian Subway at Grosvner Vadehra, London, and several others at Sakshi Gallery and Gallery OED. He had his first solo show The City and the Tower at Sakshi Gallery in 2008. He was part of Khoj Kolkata artists residency in 2009, and has received various awards such as the Kerala Lalit Kala Academi State Award and a Merit Scholarship from the University of Hyderabad.
Charmi Gada Shah completed her Bachelors in Fine Arts from the L.S. Raheja School of Art, Mumbai, and her Post-Graduate degree from Chelsea College of Art, London. In 2009 she received the Art India ‘Promising Artist Award’. She has exhibited in group shows including The Staircase Project, at Kashi Art Residency, Cochin (2008), Relative Visa (2009) and Her Work is Never Done (2010) curated by Bose Krishnamachari, Mumbai, and Generation in Transition: New art from India, curated by Magda Kardasz at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw(2011). She has been shown at Art Gwangju, Korea, by Gallery BMB (2010), and Prague Biennale 5 - India Pavilion curated by Kanchi Mehta (2011). She lives and works in Mumbai. Shah's practice engages with the passage of time and the subsequent shifts that have occurred in the meaning and function of architecture. She often works with built spaces that are invariably either abandoned, neglected or in a state of disuse; through the process of revisiting them, and building or innovating on their outlines, Shah draws attention back to these spaces and their disjuncture in time and space. Employing different media, including drawing, sculpture, photography, film and architecture, she formulates a network of correlations that play on notions of memory, destruction and conservation. The works, as installations, become in-situ repositories of documentation, fiction and mimesis.
Image courtesy: (left) Charmi Gada Shah, The Common Wall; (right) Sujith SN, There Is No Brick In The Wall.
Information courtesy -
FOUNDATION FOR INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART (FICA)
