Encounter

source: galeriems

Considered one of the significant artists of her generation, Tejal Shah (b. 1979) works in video, photography, and performance. Shah has exhibited extensively outside India, and we are proud to present her debut solo exhibition at home. Here, she presents a new two-channel video installation, a set of large and small scale photographs, and sound pieces with wall text and mirrors. Central to this exhibition is Shah’s exploration of the pliable language of gender, manipulated in a physical, concrete manner not only by her chosen subjects — members of the hijra community — but also through the media employed. Moving casually between staged performances, music video, documentary and appropriation, ‘What are You?’ creates a direct relationship to her subjects’ experience of their own gender.

Rapidly paced shots of tetra pods and close ups of skin establish the space of the video-film both geographically, Bombay, and conceptually, the body. Then, the women appear. Confronting us with their stare, they begin a recitation of their constitutionally guaranteed rights. The self-conscious performativity falls with bursts of laughter, displacing our reading of their relationship to the recited text.

A wash of images — lights, panels, scientific shots, pulsating flesh scalpel cut, yoga poses, tape reels rewinding — foreshadow the kernel of transformation that is contained within the physical act of a gender reassignment surgery. Sneha appears, showing photographs of her surgery as her doctor explains the procedure. The split screen presents to us simultaneously the content and the beautiful result contrasted with the doctor’s clinical and proud account, inviting us to meditate on the mythic underpinnings of this most profound of journeys. The film concludes with slow dancing bodies moving with colorful, undulating patterns, immersing us in the life embracing vitality of this community.

In the photographic series, the participant-performers from the film step out of the moving image, into fantastical still frames where their desired self- representation is enacted. The artist in conversation with her protagonists sets up an ideal world, playfully turning the imagined into reality.

‘What are You?’ premiered in May-June 2006 at the Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, and was reviewed, amongst other publications, by Art in America.

Shah grew up in Bhilai (Chattisgarh), eventually moving to Bombay in 1995. She completed her BA in photography from Australia and went to the Art Institute of Chicago as a Visiting Scholar. Since 2001, she has been working and living in Bombay.

Recent participations include Subcontingent — The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art at The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 2006 and Indian Summer at L’ Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2005. Forthcoming projects are a performance at the Tate Modern, London inSeptember 2006, and in 2007 Shah will participate in the inaugural presentation of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

Her works are in leading collections such as The Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection in New Delhi and The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

This exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue including texts by Carey Lovelace, Geeta Kapur, Johan Pijnappel and Livia Monnet.