The exhibition presented by the ABOUTTURN Project, explores the idea of in between-ness not only in the art practices but in one’s ways of being. Initiated in 2016, the ABOUTTURN Project aims at revisiting, debating, testing, negotiating; negating; questioning; proposing, reinforcing etc. the myriad premises around gender and creating a socio-cultural dialogue through an aesthetic approach. While gender as an idea is fluid in spite of strict societal compartments and embodies the character of in-between-ness, the project on the whole is an attempt to look at individual voices & expressions in their state of becoming; how they serve as building blocks to a larger whole.

Participating artists and projects

Each practitioner is looking at IN-BETWEEN in a distinct way.

While Rafoo-Mend Thyself by Priya Ravish Mehra looks at rafoo as an apt metaphor for the healing of our complicated and grievously ruptured socio-cultural fabric in the present scenario of ideological polarization, pathological intolerance and communal violence, Moumita Ghosh explores her own body; means to decorate it and decode its nature in Decoding/decorating. Epsita Halder’s engagement with the Shia community for the last six-seven years, the rituals of Muharram and performative piety has culminated in the collection of found objects, photographic images and voice recordings titled Karbala.

Beech Sadak by Sumantra Mukherjee looks at the tremendous overlapping & cohabiting of ideas & techniques in the folk & the contemporary through the artist’s collaboration with the community at Ajodhya,Bonkati- situated on the lines of the Ajoy nadh ( a male river)& Joydev,Kenduli, West Bengal. Nilanjana Nandy’s Being Alice like traces a state of becoming - an interface between myriad things ranging from tales of monumentality of human deeds to something very mundane, fragile or intimate. Korean artist Helen Kim’s ‘K-Town Is My Town’ an interactive performance in the guise of a walking tour through the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles blurs the line between art and everyday social interaction. While mother-son duo, Merlin Moli and Sibi Abhimanue‘s performance based work Matanghi presents the story of the goddess of words known as Uchitta Bhagawati, the first outspoken and the one who sacrificed herself as a revolting woman, The Doll House by Soma Mukhopadhyay brings stories of folk dolls from Bengal, their materiality, techniques and role in the society (now & then). Sujan Dangol from Nepal depicts youth frustration because of urbanization, living for so called urban mandate; imposition of capital conquered education rather than practical and reliable education & loss of values like human trust and worth in his video Tired of mother’s womb. Anmol Ghari by Sabrina Osborne re- enacts a song from the Bollywood movie by the same title released in 1946, just before India gained freedom from British rule in 1947. The reenacting questions the status of women in 21^st Century patriarchal society, when the nation is on the brink of becoming one of the world economic powerhouses in the coming years. Short & subtle, Anke Mellin from Germany revisits ideas around femininity and feminism in her video Brustschwimmen (Breaststroke) while Afsana Sharmin from Bangladesh speaks for the missing voice ,the dreams & aspirations of ‘She’ in her work titled…and her way.