About the Artist: Yogendra M. Shah

Yogendra M. Shah, the artist currently featured at the Tamarind Art Gallery, is an Indian-born wildlife photographer who is currently working as a research affiliate at the Gir National Park in Gujarat, India. He was also recently commissioned by the Gujarat Forest Department to research the distribution and status of small rare species in the Saurastra region, a project he has been working on for over six years now.

Yogendra has actively worked with wildlife for the past 16 years after receiving his Bachelor of Commerce in Zoology at the Gujarat University of India. He also has a Masters of Science in Ecology and Environment from Manipal Sikkim University in New Delhi. Throughout his years of field experience, Yogendra has been invited to do research and photography for many big wildlife organizations in India, such as the Gujarat Forest Department and the Rajesthan Forest Department. He has worked on research projects including the waterfowl census at the Nalsarovar Bird Sanctuary, the Great Indian Bustard census at Naliya, and the tiger census at Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, among others. Yogendra has traveled to many areas throughout India to examine and study India’s magnificent wildlife.

His photography has been nationally exhibited throughout India, and in 2002 he received the Wildlife Photography Award for his distinguished wildlife photography from the prestigious visual arts school, Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi. Yogendra has also made important contributions to major wildlife publications such as Important Bird Areas for the Bomaby Natural History Society and The Gir Lion by Dr. H.S. Singh. Yogendra’s show at Tamarind Art Gallery, Nature Captured, will be his first international exhibition.

Nature Captured

India’s growing population and its civic and technological expansion are rapidly threatening the countries colorful and diverse wildlife. This situation is endangering India’s biodiversity, and may possibly lead to the extinction of several unique species. In an effort to bring about an awareness of these dangerous circumstances, Tamarind Art Gallery is showcasing an expansive exhibition of sixty-three photographs of Indian wildlife. Each animal featured suffers from the threat of extinction due to land development and human exploitation of natural resources.

The show is a collection of works by professional wildlife photographer and avid conservationist, Yogendra M. Shah. Each photograph brings the elusive beauty of these creatures in their natural habitat to light. All of the images on display are available in limited edition prints from the gallery; the proceeds will go towards the World Wildlife Federation, The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the Wildlife Management Institute in order to conserve and protect India’s natural wildlife.

We hope that the images in this exhibition not only please your aesthetic sense but also inspire a communal sense of responsibility to protect and cherish our common natural heritage. In our modern and interconnected world, we have all become collective stakeholders despite political boundaries. Nature is so intricately interwoven that irresponsible actions taking place on any corner of the planet affect us all. These photographs serve to remind us of that essential, but all too often forgotten, truth.

The show will run from July 7th 2009 until August 8th 2009.

An Unreadable Text: Indian Art and Modernity after 1947

An Unreadable Text: Indian Art and Modernity after 1947

Tamarind Art Council is excited to host Rebecca M. Brown an associate professor of art history at Johns Hopkins University, and author of the recent book, Art for a Modern India, 1947-1980. On April 17, at 6:30 pm.

To attend please RSVP to rsvp@tamarindart.org or call 212-200-8000
For more information on Tamarind Arts Council Please visit our website www.tamarindart.org


Following India’s independence in 1947, Indian artists creating modern works of art sought to maintain a local idiom, an “Indianness” representative of their newly independent nation, while connecting to modernism, an aesthetic then understood as both universal and presumptively Western. These artists depicted India’s precolonial past while embracing aspects of modernism’s pursuit of the new, and they challenged the West’s dismissal of non-Western places and cultures as sources of primitivist imagery but not of modernist artworks. In Art for a Modern India, Rebecca M. Brown explores the emergence of a self-conscious Indian modernism—in painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, film, and photography—in the years between independence and 1980, by which time the Indian art scene had changed significantly and postcolonial discourse had begun to complicate mid-century ideas of nationalism.

Through close analyses of specific objects of art and design, Brown describes how Indian artists engaged with questions of authenticity, iconicity, narrative, urbanization, and science and technology. She explains how the filmmaker Satyajit Ray presented the rural Indian village as a socially complex space rather than as the idealized site of “authentic India” in his acclaimed Apu Trilogy, how the painter Bhupen Khakhar reworked Indian folk idioms and borrowed iconic images from calendar prints in his paintings of urban dwellers, and how Indian architects developed a revivalist style of bold architectural gestures anchored in India’s past as they planned the Ashok Hotel and the Vigyan Bhavan Conference Center, both in New Delhi. Discussing these and other works of art and design, Brown chronicles the mid-twentieth-century trajectory of India’s modern visual culture.

This will be a wonderful talk on modern and contemporary art in India and should not be missed by scholars and art lovers a like. Copies of Rebecca's Book will be available for sale.

CONTEMP-NATYAM by Jaan R. Freeman, Romona Mukherjee and student performers of Dakshina Palli, Inc. on March 21, 2008

Tamarind Art Council presented CONTEMP-NATYAM by Jaan R. Freeman, Romona Mukherjee and student performers of Dakshina Palli, Inc. on March 21, 2008

CONTEMP-NATYAM is a program which draws from the movement vocabularies of Bharata Natyam (South Indian Classical Dance) and American Modern Dance, choreographed by Dakshina's founding Director: Jaan R. Freeman. Freeman’s choreography is a combination of the highly systematized vocabulary of Bharatanatyam and the kinetic and bold approach of modern dance; which brings forth a true synthesis of modern art.

Featured Dance items: A tribute to Rabindranath Tagore and Ananda Shankar, folk Songs of Sri Lanka, Drums, Ghatam and Tabla. Student performers include Alpi Sinha, Shani Pascal, Sarmi Biswas, Smita Chehhda, Penelope Kalloo and Priyanka Pendharkar.
Dakshina Palli, Inc. Led by the dynamic artistic vision of Jaan R. Freeman. DPDC (Dakshina Palli Dance Company) a resident company of Dakshina Palli was established in 2005. The company showcases the rich, highly elegant and distinguished repertoire of the Balasaraswati lineage as well as feature the outstanding, emerging guest artist of their peers. In February 2005 DPDC founded its series entitled “A New Generation”, a program featuring young professional dancers of this lineage, with a fresh interpretation of this traditional and ancient art form. DPDC maintains that it isn’t a repository of the classical repertoire only, but a company which would showcase new innovative contemporary bharatanatyam dances.
The DPDC is a unique company whose strength is its repertory. The company has performed at:Trisha Brown Dance Center, City Center Studios, Sri Venkateswara Balaji Hindu temple, Merkin Hall, Biko Center, Downtown Dance Festival, Ananda Ashram, Mary Anthony Dance Theater and the Elebash Recital Hall at CUNY. The Company flourishes under the guidance of - SHANTI PILLAI, ROMONA MUKHERJEE & RUKMANI J. VENKATARAMANI.

’Metamorphic Medium’ Pablo Bartholomew speaks at Tamarind Art

On March 18 Tamarind Art Council was host to Eminent photographer Pablo Bartholomew who present his father Richard Bartholomew’s photographic oeuvre and discuss continuing aesthetic lineage in his own work in the talk ’Metamorphic Medium’. Pablo will trace the influences that are not just process for artisans passed on from one generation to other, but a much deeper engagement to work out issues and questions of roots and identity.

Richard Bartholomew (1926-1985), acclaimed writer, painter, curator, and art critic, rarely exhibited his photographic work during his lifetime. During the 1960s and 70s, he keenly photographed life as it revolved around him – his immediate family, his travels in India as well as the United States, and his intertwined relationship with fellow members of the art world.

Born in India, Pablo Bartholomew’s photographic career began in his teens. Since becoming a photojournalist in 1983, his work has appeared in major news publications, including Time, News week, Paris Match and The Guardian. Pablo has worked with leading film directors/producers, including Merchant/Ivory and Richard Attenborough. Having a strong belief in the exhibition space, he widely exhibited in India and internationally through one person shows museum shows and photo festivals.
The talk is free and open to public.

Kamal Mitra- “Oblique Memoir”
It has been nearly a year and half since Tamarind Art has been able to showcase one of its most powerful and thought provoking artists, Kamal Mitra. Tamarind Art Council would like to welcome our frineds back to the gallery with a second solo exhibition, “Oblique Memoir”, featuring oil, acrylic and charcoal on canvas consistent with critically acclaimed exhibitions of the winter of 2006 and the fall of 2007. “Oblique memoir” is an internal monologue by means of which unfortunate events of Kamal Mitra’s life is broken into fragments of memory, which replicate and document the cacophony of emotions he experienced in recent time past.

An opening reception was held on March 19, 6:30-8:00PM

Exhibition runs through: March 19-April 30, 2009
This is a wonderful show that should not be missed.

Busy Spring At Tamarind Art

We have had a super fun spring so far and it is only going to get better. So far we have had 3 evenings of dance; Ramya Ramnarayan did a wonderful Bharathnatyam performance, Bani Ray brought us an evening of Odissi Dance, and Satya Pradeep and her students brought us a wonderful evening of dance in the Kuchipudi style. We were also treated to an evening of music with, Sanjukta Sen (Vocalist), Madhu Vora (Harmonium) & Tapan Modak (Tabla).

All of these performances were wonderful and very well attended often in spite of unpleasant wintry weather.

In the coming months we will be continuing to bring you more cultural programing, we will be having more dance evenings in addition to Music and some arts lectures as well as wonderful art shows.

Be sure to check our website www.tamarindart.org for more information on our upcoming events.