For instance, Anup Mathew Thomas' "Light Life" depicts the empty interiors of the dance bars of Mumbai. The work questions the "ban on dance bars".
Video Wednesday, one of the biggest exhibitions of video art in the country spread over a year, will close with a digital blitz in the capital during July 29-Aug 1. It has featured video works by over 60 artists.
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Since July 2008, the capital-based Gallery Espace has dedicated every Wednesday to the promotion of video art with shows and accompanying lecture sessions as part of an outreach programme.
Video Wednesday was curated by art critic JohnnyML.
The experimental video art started making inroads in the country around 2000 with the digitisation of the media.
It has come of age now with nearly 80 percent of the young artists using the video as a tool to express themselves creatively. Buyers are also expressing interest in this genre because the videos are "cheaper than mainstream art" and are portable.
Prices of video art range between Rs.5,000 and Rs.300,000, say dealers and those working in galleries.
Video art, it is said, took off as a genre when the Korea-born American artist Nam June Paik used his new Sony Portapak (video) camera to shoot the footage of Pope Paul VI's procession through New York city in the autumn of 1965. The same day, Paik played his tapes at a Greenwich village cafe. And it became video art.
"The market for video art in India is mostly young and up-end. Most of the buyers, who are upwardly mobile professionals, have state-of-the art television sets or projection facilities at home to screen the videos. The idea behind Video Wednesday was to acquaint local audiences with and encourage them to see works by artists from India and abroad. I have even sold my works," Renu Modi of Gallery Espace told IANS.
Video has been one of the most popular visual mediums since the advent of VHS tapes, players and recorders in the Indian market during the mid-1980s, said JohnnyML, project curator of Video Wednesday.
"But video as a means to screen digital art has taken time to capture the imagination of the people and the artists -- at least two decades. Once transported into the context of art, video became something alien. I was interested in this alienating factor and the project was conceived to create new audience groups for video art in India," the curator explained.
The grand finale will be curated by five guests, Nancy Adjania, Bose Krishnamachari, Arshiya Lokhandwala, Suresh Jayaram and Gayatri Sinha, in five different sections. The show will also be accompanied by the launch of a tabloid and an open forum on video art.
The works to be displayed in the exhibition are complex, a sneak peek reveals.
For instance, Anup Mathew Thomas' "Light Life" depicts the empty interiors of the dance bars of Mumbai. The work questions the "ban on dance bars".
Video artist Sudarshan Shetty's "Six Drops" is a story about the making of the "Turbine Hall" of the Tate Modern, the museum of international modern art in Britain, which is said to be haunted. Once home to electricity generators of an old power station, it comprises five storeys with a floor space of 3,400 square metres.
The three works form part of a segment curated by Bose Krishnamachari, who had curated the Indian Panorama at ARCOMadrid in Spain in January.
"One of the reasons why video art strikes an immediate chord is because it feels like a movie capsule, which has an artistic narrative and motion. People respond because it uses photography as its principal medium," Modi said.
The themes are varied. The section curated by Gayatri Sinha blends everyday chores with innovation.
"Cooking Concepts", a video clip by artist Surekha, makes the act of cooking an erotic adventure, visual consumption and a comment on women's labour. The simple acts of mixing and kneading the dough in the video are compared to mountains and body organs.
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