Latest news with #DAG
Time of India
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Ditch cafe-hopping and visit these 5 must-see art exhibitions in Mumbai this June
While June marks the start of Mumbai's much-anticipated monsoon season, it is also the season of creativity and expression, when the city's most awaited galleries reveal their share of new and engaging exhibitions. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Here are five must-see art exhibits that will captivate, challenge and transport you, with their tactile narratives and symbolic installations. 1. 'It Didn't Ask to Be Art' by Manoj Jain - Soho House, Juhu Curated by Dheeya Soumaiya, Manoj Jain's debut solo exhibit explores the subtleties that differentiate imaginative motivation from interpretation. By questioning standard ideas of art, the exhibition encourages spectators to consider the lines separating conscious creativity from coincidental brilliance. The exhibition's minimal location at Soho House provides an inviting atmosphere for this reflective voyage. 2. 'Bon-manush' by Shikh Sabbir Alam - Experimenter, Colaba "Bon-manush," a collection of artworks reviewing the relationship between people and environment, is on display in Shikh Sabbir Alam's first standalone show in Mumbai. Combining the Bengali terms for "forest" and "person," this name emphasizes the contradictions inherent in the human identity and the world of nature. Grounded in his theories of nature and life, Alam's pieces provide an immersive journey that juxtaposes reality with illusion. 3. 'Untamed Heart' by Laila Khan Furniturewalla - Gallery Art & Soul, Worli "Untamed Heart" by Laila Khan Furniturewalla, which marks the artist's return to the art world after eighteen years, is a very intimate show that documents her spiritual journey and artistic progression. With a heartfelt homage to her parents and her artistic path, the pieces explore identity, emotion and memory with the incorporation of sand, gold leaf and reflective surfaces. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now 4. 'Pillars of Fruit and Bone' by Rithika Merchant - TARQ, Fort The latest paintings in Rithika Merchant's solo installation "Pillars of Fruit and Bone," at TARQ, elaborate on concepts from her earlier pieces. Attendees are drawn into a realm where the lines between the natural and the mystical are blurred by the exhibition's intricate dive into folklore and nature. 5. 'The Babu and the Bazaar' - DAG, Fort This exhibition at DAG features art from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Bengal, with a focus on Kalighat and early Bengal paintings done in oil. By assessing the relationship within classical forms of art and the thriving urban culture of imperial Bengal, "The Babu and the Bazaar" provides a glimpse into the creative and cultural atmosphere of the era. Each of these shows offer an original take on a variety of creative expressions, making them worth a visit for those residing in or visiting Mumbai in June.
Business Recorder
5 days ago
- Politics
- Business Recorder
Meeting of IATF, IPCC: IHC grants time to govt to submit reply
ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC), Thursday, granted time to the government to submit its reply regarding the meeting of Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee on Narcotics Control and implementation of court's orders to authorities to immediately halt the couriers and food deliveries to students at educational institutions to curb narcotics. A single bench of Justice Raja Inaam Ameen Minhas, on Thursday, issued the directions during hearing of a petition filed by Lakki Foundation, a civil society organisation, highlighting the alarming rise in drug addiction among students in Islamabad and seeking the inclusion of anti-narcotics awareness in the academic curriculum of Islamabad's schools and colleges. During the hearing, the Deputy Attorney General (DAG) appeared before the court and sought more time to submit the reply in this matter as counsel for the petitioner had previously contended that the IATF and Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee on Narcotics Control, constituted under the relevant Act, is one of the most important bodies responsible for regulating and ensuring effective control of narcotics throughout the country but no such meeting of IATF held. At this, the DAG was directed to submit a report indicating when the last meeting of the Council was held and the decisions taken therein. Similarly, Shafqat Ghafar, counsel for respondent No 9, had appeared and sought time to file a comprehensive report regarding the inclusion of narcotics related information in the curriculum. On the last hearing, expressing serious concern that drugs are being delivered to students under the guise of items like pizza and snacks Justice Minhas remarked, 'Children order pizza and receive drugs along with it.' He added, 'Stop all direct deliveries to students. Any school or college that fails to comply should face legal action.' Justice Minhas directed the authorities to monitor all courier services operating in and around educational institutions and ensure a ban on direct deliveries to students. Acceding to the plea of DAG, Justice Minhas deferred hearing of the case after Eid holidays directing the authorities to submit the report. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
India's colonial past revealed through 200 masterful paintings
Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India company gradually transformed into a colonial power. By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, company officials began commissioning Indian artists - many formerly employed by the Mughals - to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling. A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India's largest exhibition of company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian artists. Painted by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs. "The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes," says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show. "Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice." Beyond natural history, India's architectural heritage captivated European visitors. Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local artists. Beyond the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti's tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi's Qutub Minar and Humayun's Tomb. The once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them. From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India's first governor general much earlier.) The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal). While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal's capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta's (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed it. Originally part of the Louisa Parlby Album - named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal - the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa's return to Britain in 1801. "The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century," writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University. "These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected." Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters. At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above. Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition. By the late 18th Century, company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists. Art historian Mildred Archer called them a "fascinating record of Indian social life," blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective. Regional styles added richness - Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions - nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers. "They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience's fascination with the 'exoticism' of Indian life," says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG. Most studies of company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727. A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry - uniform in size and style - showing the kind of work French collectors sought by 1800. One painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a chilingue. Among the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank rowboats. With no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore. Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants - especially from private menageries. As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings - just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species itself. Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG says the the latest show proposes company paintings as the "starting point of Indian modernism". Anand says this "was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons". "The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation," he says. "Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art."
Express Tribune
24-05-2025
- Climate
- Express Tribune
UAE records scorching 51.6°C in Sweihan, highest temperature of the year
Listen to article The United Arab Emirates recorded its highest temperature of the year so far on Saturday, with the mercury soaring to a blistering 51.6°C at 1:45pm, according to the National Center of Meteorology (NCM). The temperature was recorded in Sweihan, Al Ain, and marks one of the highest ever temperatures recorded in the country this season, signalling an early and intense start to the UAE's summer. This comes just days after the UAE reported 50.4°C on May 23, the highest May temperature since the NCM began tracking weather patterns in 2003. The current heatwave follows last month's record-breaking April, which saw an average daily high of 42.6°C, surpassing the previous April record of 42.2°C set in 2017. The astronomical summer has yet to begin, officially starting on June 21 with the summer solstice — the point when the Sun reaches its highest and northernmost position in the sky, explained Khadijah Al Hariri, Operations Manager at DAG. Last July, the UAE registered 50.8°C in Sweihan, a peak that this year's May temperatures are already approaching, raising concerns about what lies ahead in the coming summer months. Authorities are urging residents to take all necessary precautions, especially as temperatures climb past the critical 50°C mark. Extreme heat poses serious health risks, particularly for vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, pregnant women, and individuals with chronic conditions. With the heat intensifying earlier than usual, health officials stress the importance of staying hydrated, avoiding outdoor activities during peak hours, and keeping informed through official weather updates.
Indian Express
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
The art of war: How artists have chronicled India's conflicts
'Make Art, Not War,' wrote contemporary artist Subodh Gupta on Instagram earlier this month. Amid escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, Gupta here suggested 'art' — and its aesthetic qualities — as an alternative to 'peace'. But beauty is not all that art is about. A work of art captures the period of time in which it was made better than almost any other medium, says Kishore Singh, Head, Exhibitions and Publications, DAG. 'Art is able to offer perspectives that reflect social and political issues as well as the artist's own thinking,' he told The Indian Express. And because art is subjective, the viewers' sensibilities are as important as those of the artist. 'This allows for diverse commentaries to emerge, thereby offering alternative perspectives based on one's own lived experiences — an indulgence not available through any other medium. Without this documentation and its ability to absorb the multipolarities offered by art, society would be in danger of becoming a unipolar world,' Singh says. Responding to war has been no different for Indian artists. Their visual evocations of the tragedy and triumph of India's wars have created a corpus of artworks that now serve as indispensable documentation. Here's a brief history. The birth of a nation India was born in 1947 not as one nation but two. The Partition resulted in the largest exodus in history, displacing as many as 20 million people, and communal violence triggered in its wake left as many as 2 million people dead. This was an event as devastating as any war. Satish Gujral poignantly captured the loss of life and the idea of home in his Partition series. His figurative works in predominantly sombre shades of black, grey and occasional browns narrated the anguish and despair of those, including himself, forced to leave everything behind. Wrapped in tornado-esque swirls, his figures spoke of the storm that hit their lives. Gujral began the series nearly a decade after the Partition. He drew from memory but the scars were deep enough to inspire a body of work 'devoted to the idea of violence, loss, and migration in the face of uncertainty and death,' according to Singh. In the 2007 documentary on the Partition titled The Day India Burned, Gujral had said, 'This experience sunk in me so deep that after Partition when I began to paint without any conscious effort, this human suffering, this brutality of man to man, became my theme.' Many artistic iterations of conflict revolve around the idea of loss, an emotion captured all too well by Tyeb Mehta in his paintings Falling Bird (2004) and Trussed Bull (1956), the latter being the second most expensive Indian artwork ever sold. 'He did not directly paint his experience of war but depicted it as a loss of power and humanity, expressing its grotesqueness and exposing vulnerabilities,' Singh says. Soon after Partition, India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. This war, which began in 1947 and lasted till the end of 1948, would be the first of many fights the two countries would have over the years. The sequence of events — the establishment of the piquet on the Bodh Kulan Ganj cliffs, the unfolding of the battle in the Gurais Valley, the subsequent developments in Uri, and the final battle in Zoji La — was recreated in a series of drawings by documentary filmmaker Serbjeet Singh, better known for his paintings of the Himalayas. These paintings were commissioned by the military itself. 'He was tasked with documenting the first Kashmir war of 1948 and the role of the Indian Army in it by General K S Thimaya as a means of recording history,' DAG's Kishore Singh says. A set of 47 drawings by Serbjeet Singh titled Kashmir War went under the hammer in 2018 at a Bonhams auction. Decade of two wars Serbjeet Singh's services were sought once again, this time by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to document the India-China war of 1962. Singh was reportedly asked to draw a landscape of the North East Frontier Agency (renamed Arunachal pradesh in 1972) to understand where the Indian army had faltered. Many of Singh's drawings continue to be displayed at the headquarters of the Indian Army in New Delhi. But it was with the 1965 India-Pakistan war that the significance of art as a medium of documentation received unprecedented state support. Under the Army's 'witness programme', four members of the Bombay Progressive Art Movement — MF Husain, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna and Tyeb Mehta — were invited to the war zone in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. Husain reportedly made quick drawings of what he saw, a few of which were auctioned by Pundole's in 2019. 'To both heal the emotional trauma and to create a visual record, Husain made several drawings of the destruction he witnessed, and recreated visuals of battle stories as recounted by the soldiers. As a token of appreciation for the jawans, he offered to draw portraits of anyone willing to sit for him. Several obliged, and the artist recollects giving away scores of drawings to his models and also brought a few back for himself,' notes the auction house website. In a previous interview to The Indian Express, Khanna had confessed to painting a distressing image of a soldier who was blown apart inside a tank. When no one bought it, he gave the work to his son. Mehta, on the other hand, recreated the Dograi Battle on canvas. 'Tyeb once showed me the slide of a painting he had done after this visit,' recalls art historian, critic and curator R Sivakumar. 'Most artists are more humanists than jingoists, and that makes them good interlocutors in times of peace but bad soldiers for the nation in times of war.' Liberation & loss The largest body of anti-war paintings emerged from the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, with artists such as Bikash Bhattacharjee, Ganesh Pyne, Somnath Hore, Nikhil Biswas, Nirode Majumdar and Rabin Mondal creating 'unusually bleak paintings, prints and sculptures' as a form of 'societal indictment'. In his familiar primitivist style, Mondal, for instance, addressed the large-scale displacement caused by the war in his Crossing the Border series. 'It continues to impact us just as strongly as in the 1970s, reflecting the futility, but also the dangers, of borders that separate countries and their people,' DAG's Singh says. The tragedy of what had unfolded in Bengal inspired artists around the subcontinent. Gulammohammed Sheikh ditched his otherwise vibrant palette to depict the horrors of the violence in a rather grim etching titled Riots (1971). Equally poignant was Bhupen Khakar's Muktibahini Soldier with a Gun painted in 1972 and executed in his quintessential figurative style. K G Subramanyan's terracotta reliefs bring the perpetrators of violence and their victims into sharp juxtaposition. 'That through the deft manipulation of clay, he gave sensuous embodiment to the aggressor's inhumanity and the victim's vulnerability, makes these works powerfully expressive,' says Sivakumar, recalling how the artist said that such works 'come about only when an outside event is perceived as an assault on one's being'. Like with darkness, there is light; in despair there is hope. Chittaprosad's Bangladesh War (1971) epitomises this sentiment. 'It celebrates the creation of Bangladesh, replacing the invading Pakistani army with the forces of the Mukti Bahini. The country is represented in the form of a woman bestowing the boons of education, prosperity and wisdom on her citizens. It is a moving homage to the creation of a new identity and must be the most poignant visual tribute — a hymn really — to the birth of a new nation ever painted by any artist,' Singh says. Scars that stay The thing about war is that its effects are felt long after the guns go silent. The trauma of violence passed on through generations forms the subject of the practices of many contemporary Indian artists, who may not have witnessed war first-hand or were too young to process the severity of the losses. In her There was a Home series, Prajakta Potnis superimposes found pieces of wall with peeled wall colour, alluding to the debris of houses in the aftermath of war. This series, which she began in 2024, serves today as a grim reminder of the homes lost in Kashmir in the recent India-Pakistan clashes. The prolonged effects of war are also captured with nuance by artist Baptist Coelho in his series Bandages-Bullets. He uses the seemingly contrasting objects — both symbols of war — to make a comment on perception. 'In 2015, during my exhibition in Leh, a little girl, upon seeing gauze bandages in an artwork, remarked that they looked like cartridges,' the artist recalls. 'Her words revealed how trauma and conflict shape perception, turning symbols of healing into markers of destruction.'
