Professional Experience

2013
Solo show ‘Beyond Pain: An Afterlife’ at Sakshi Gallery and Project 88, Mumbai, in collaboration with Himmat. (Supported by The India Foundation for the Arts and Khoj International Artists’ Association).

‘Ground Zero”, a public discussion with curator Sasha Altaf, organized by The Mohile Parikh Centre, at the NGMA, Mumbai.

2012
Solo show ‘The Anatomy of Celebration” at Latitude 28, New Delhi.

Talk at the Forum for Contemporary Theory, Baroda.

2011
Solo show ‘The Anatomy of Celebration’ at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai.

‘The Presence of the Past’, workshop with students at Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan.

Compilation of project work for an IFA (India Foundation for the Arts) dissemination grant.

Represented at The India Art Summit by Sakshi Gallery for two consecutive years.

2010
Completing and compiling work for the IFA dissemination grant.

2009
‘Finding India’, organized by Sakshi Gallery at the Convention Centre, Seoul, Korea.

Workshops at Khoj, New Delhi: ‘Imagine Peace’ (April), and workshop/discussion around community projects (October).

Received the Himmat Workshops/dissemination grant awarded by the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore.

‘Bapu’, curated by Gayatri Sinha and shown at Saffronart, Mumbai.

Working on a new body of paintings through the year.

‘Logistics of Perception: Images from Contested Zones’: Seminar/workshop organized by Majlis at Pondicherry.

Residencies / illustrated talks at Vidyasagar Art Centre, Hyderabad and SN School of Performing Arts, Fine Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad, curated by Rasna Bhushan and supported by Max Mueller Bhavan and Alliance Francaise.

2007
Solo show ‘Untouchable’ at Sakshi Gallery Mumbai and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.

‘New Narratives: Contemporary Art from India’, curated by Betty Seid for the Chicago Cultural Centre.

‘Tiger by the Tail’, curated by Elinor Gadon, Wendy Tarlow Kaplan and Roobina Karode for the Women’s Studies Research Centre, Brandeis University, Waltham (Massachusetts), US.

‘Horn Please: Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art’, curated by Bernard Fibicher and Suman Gopinath, at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland.

‘Edge of Desire’, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, at NGMA Mumbai.

Experimenta 2007 ( Bangalore and Bombay): Screening of ‘Cutting Chai’, one of the films edited from video footage shot by the participants of the Himmat Workshops, a collaborative project funded by the India Foundation for the Arts.

Served as external examiner (Painting), MS University, since 2004.

Residency at Khoj, New Delhi, to compile the output from the Himmat Workshops. A package of six short videos were edited from footage shot by the participants, and a trial exhibit mounted at the Khoj premises in October.

Illustrated talks at Khoj and the School of Art and Aesthetics, JNU.

Edge of Desire at NGMA, New Delhi.

2005
January 2005 - June 2006: fieldwork (in Vatva, Ahmedabad) for the Himmat Workshops/project, aimed at building a visual archive, post - 2002, created by a group of survivors of the communal conflict early that year.

Illustrated talk at Mica Mudra Institute, organized by the IFA.

2004
‘Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India’, opens, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani and supported by Art Gallery of Western Australia and The Asia Society, New York.

Illustrated talk at the Little Theatre, NCPA, Mumbai.

Illustrated talk at the UGC National Seminar ‘Issues of Art and Activism: the Artist and the Historian’ at The Dept. of Art History and Aesthetics, MSU Baroda.

Grant awarded by the India Foundation for the Arts for a collaborative project, the Himmat Workshops.

Visiting faculty at IICD Jaipur, 2002 - 2004.

2003
‘Diverge’, curated by Geeta Kapur and Chaitanya Sambrani at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai.

‘Sub-terrain’, curated by Geeta Kapur at the House of World Cultures, Berlin.

‘The Story of Five Posters’ at The Canberra Contemporary Art Space , as a guest exhibit in ‘Witnessing to Silence: Art and Human Rights’, organized by the Australian National University Humanities Research Centre.

2002
‘The Banyan City’, Nazar Art Gallery, Baroda.

‘Transfigurations’, curated by Yashodhara Dalmia at the Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

‘Voices Against Violence’, Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda.

Solo Show ‘Secret Life’, at Art Inc. Gallery, New Delhi and Sakshi Gallery, Bangalore.

Visiting Faculty at NID, Ahmedabad.

TEACHING RESIDENCIES AND WORKSHOPS (selected) before 2001:

In 2000
Visiting artist (illustrated talks and tutorials) organized by Catherine Lobstein, Art Historian, and Peter Briggs, Sculptor/Professor at Tours at Art Schools in France, listed below:

Cergy Pontoise
Caen
Tours
Le Havre
Chatellerault

In 1999
Workshop at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad.

In 1998
Workshop in the Department of Painting, M.S. University, Baroda.

In 1996
Cumbria College of Art and Design, Carlisle.

Charlotte Mason College, Lancaster University, Ambleside.

GRANTS (selected) before 2001:

In 1996
The French Government Scholarship.

The Charles Wallace Grant.

In 1989
Ministry of Culture Fellowship for Artists.

In 1988
Central Lalit Kala Academy Research Grant.

ARTISTS' RESIDENCIES and group shows (selected) before 2001:

In 2000
Khoj International Artists’ Workshops, New Delhi.

In 1998
Kuona Trust (Nairobi National Museum), Kenya/ residency at Naivasha and group show at the museum, supported by The Triangle Arts Trust and Khoj.

In 1996
Residency/ show at Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris.

Residency at Shaddon Mills Visual Arts Centre, Carlisle.

Residency/show at Gasworks Studios, London.

Group show organized by Kapil Jariwala Gallery at Delphina Studios, London.

Group show at Castlegate House Gallery, Cockermouth, Cumbria, curated by Christine Wadsworth.

Research Interests

Painting, writing, print-making, photography, video, /Trans-media projects that investigate art, society and violence, New Curriculums for Drawing.

Solo Shows
Secret Life (2001)
Untouchable (2007)
The Anatomy of Celebration (2011)
Beyond Pain: An Afterlife (2013)
There have been several preceding solos, but perhaps not as well-integrated in terms of a body of work. There have also been catalogue texts, and artists’ books.

Executive Summary

Vasudha Thozhur was born in Mysore in 1956 and studied at the College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, and at the School of Art and Design, Croydon, UK. She has lived and worked mostly in Madras between 1981 - 1997, at the Regional Lalit Kala Akademi studios and at Cholamandal Artists’ Village, apart from a year at Garhi, New Delhi, and a short teaching stint at Rishi Valley School, KFI.

Besides participation in exhibitions and residencies in the country and abroad, institutional work has involved lectures/teaching/workshops as visiting faculty at MS University Baroda, NID Ahmedabad and IICD, Jaipur.

Two grants from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore, between 2004 - 2006/2009 - 2011, supported a research project, ‘The Himmat Workshops’. Among other things, the project looked at ways of rooting art practice in ground and other realities as experienced in our location in India. It involved collaborating with Himmat, an activist organization based in Vatva, Ahmedabad. The output from this project, entitled “Beyond Pain: An Afterlife”, was shown this year, 2013, at Sakshi Gallery and Project 88

Other interests include writing and music; text, both written and spoken, is incorporated in various ways into her practice.