Kanchan Chander
Kanchan Chander (born 1957) is an Indian artist, sculptor, and printmaker. Her work interprets femininity and the female form.
Early Life[edit]
Kanchan Chander was born in 1957 in New Delhi, India. Her father was a diplomat,[1] which allowed her to travel extensively during her childhood. This included a posting to East Berlin, a place and time which she refers to as where her career began.[1] Chander has also suggested that joining her sister in taking art classes, and her rivalry to perform as well as she did, encouraged her interest and talent in the arts.[2] She states her sister was enrolled in art classes everywhere they were posted.[2] Chander again joined her family on another diplomatic posting to Santiago, Chile, which served as her first introduction to printmaking as an artistic medium.[1] In 1980, her only brother, Vivek, passed away due to a road accident. This tragedy profoundly affected Chander’s family and her artistic output.[1] Chander married while living in Paris, though the relationship was short-lived, ending in 1996.[3] The couple had one child, a son born in 1990.[2]
Education[edit]
Chander’s diverse training suggests an interest in continual education and research. In 1975, Chander spent a year studying painting at the [East] Berlin-based Weißensee Academy of Art. In Berlin, she found the academic style of drawing very rigorous, and felt that she was falling behind the class. When she returned to India, however, she found the more meticulous style taught in Germany put her ahead of her peers.[2] Chander went on to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from the Delhi College of Art in 1976. Between 1979 and 1980, the College of Art in Santiago, Chile hosted Chander as a guest student in printmaking, allowing her to further explore her skills in the discipline.
Career[edit]
Kanchan Chander’s career is the culmination of her broad interests and education, resulting in what she calls a “beautiful journey” through the field.[2] She strongly believes in the evolution of an artist’s work, pointing to her own early works being dramatically different to her later career.[2] Chander’s career has extended beyond strict artistic practice, also encompassing roles in education and government, the latter in advisory or fellowship positions. In 1986, Chander was made a lecturer at the College of Art, in New Delhi. She held the position until 2005. She states she left the job ‘without a pension’ in response to the male dominated atmosphere, which she felt no longer suited her.[1] This feminist stance is one that is echoed in her art, which breaks taboos regarding womanhood, motherhood, and femininity.[4] It was when faced with the challenge of motherhood, caring for ageing parents, and a full time job that Chander departed from print making and turned to painting, which she found she could much more easily do with her busy schedule, as printmaking is such an intensive process.[2]
Throughout the 1980s, prestigious fellowships, grants, and scholarships helped further Chander’s artistic endeavours. During this decade, she studied at the Delhi College of Art, the Lalit Kala Academy (also known as the National Academy of Art), and the École Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, among others. The work she was able to undertake at the École Des Beaux-Arts was the result of a scholarship awarded to her by the French Government. To this day, the school still holds some of her work from this period in their archives.[4]
A unique aspect of Chander’s career has been her involvement in the arts at a federal level, receiving grants and fellowships to continue her work, and in advisory positions regarding art and culture. Between 1990 and 1992, Chander received a fellowship in printmaking and painting from India’s Ministry of Human Resources Development (now the Ministry of Education). Concurrently, the School of Planning and Architecture, also in New Delhi, hosted her as a visiting faculty member until 1991.[4] From 2019 to 2021, she returned to a similar role, serving as a senior fellow for the Indian Ministry of Culture, in New Delhi.
In 1993, the British Government awarded Chander a British Council Grant to visit art institutions in London, allowing her to pursue her own interests and further her education. This grant was an opportunity to study contemporary Western art trends.[4]
Subject Matter[edit]
Chander states that her early works are “a little bit autobiographical,” finding them affected by all that she was experiencing during that period.[2] At the start of her career, when she was in college, she lost her brother Vivek. Many of her major series at the time focused on that profound loss.[2] Her work then flowed into themes of “women’s issues.”[2] These women’s issues were not based on feminism, as she has stated she was not a feminist at the time, but always found herself concerned with the “atrocities and issues of women,” on which she centred multiple series of work.[2] Since around 1996, the most iconic and recurrent theme of Chander’s work has been the female form, with much of her work becoming more “whimsical” after a trip to the United States.[2] A retrospective show by American painter and graphic artist Robert Rauschenberg greatly influenced this shift. She points to this time as being when she began incorporating sequins and beads into her works, and when she began her first series of torsos.[2] It was not the first inclusion of the human figure in her work, as she was earlier representing full bodies with faces and arms, but it was after this 1997 encounter that she focused fully on the female torso.[2][5]
Much of Chander’s subject matter engages with the body, combining traditional Indian and contemporary feminist aesthetics throughout her works on canvas, in sculpture, print, and mixed media. Beyond reflections of the body, the most iconic aspects of Chander’s artwork are the use of mixed media and bold colours. Her works suggest a dialogue between the old and the new, and the personal and anonymous. She uses the commodification and objectification of the torso along with elements of abstraction in these depictions, allowing her to “insist on the recognition of female sexuality, creativity, and desire”[6] as they are viewed in conversation with the form. She also gains inspiration from temples she visits, finding temple figures in Tribhanga (a dance position in Odissi Indian dancing, involving three bends in the dancer’s body) one of the most affecting, effectively showing a woman who would like to speak up but cannot, contorting herself in a way that is for the pleasure of all those around her.[5] A whole series was produced based on sculptures of this form.[5] One of her works from this series is titled “Incarnation of Tolerance,” a reflection of the internalized and unspoken struggle Chander believes that most mothers and wives in India face.[5] She views the female torso as a “universal issue” and wants the viewer to be unable to recognize who they are looking at, so that they may see themselves and those they know in the form.
Other aspects of her life that she explores in her art are loss, especially that of her brother and her marriage, motherhood and the taboo of being a single mother in Indian society, as well as her relationship with herself and feminism. After her son was born she produced the Watsalia series, showing her journey into motherhood, and struggles with raising a child while working full time.[5] She sees her work with the female form as a “silent revolt through the art.”[5] Chander’s emotions towards her situation change from mourning to acceptance in all the forms it takes: from joy to despair, most prominently reflected in her use of colour. At the start of her career, she mostly worked with a natural colour palette, stating that as a young artist “one likes the colour of death,” which Chander equated with browns and blues.[2] As she matured into her adult life and career, she adopted a vibrant colour palette, though sometimes still utilizes darker and more sombre tones.[2] This vibrant and varied use of colour has become associated with modern Indian art.[4]
As her work has spanned multiple different mediums, the tools and materials Chander employs are numerous. For sculpture, she highlights fiberglass, aluminum, and steel as her main base materials. Many of her works, from her paintings and sculptures, to her mixed media projects, use found and gathered materials. These have included broken toys, wrapping paper, kitchen utensils, and the artist’s own hair.[2]
Influences[edit]
Throughout her career, Chander has cited Frida Kahlo, Amrita Sher-Gil, and Robert Rauschenberg as major artistic influences. She has also stated that “heritage”[7] is important to her, naming Classical, Gothic, Greek, and Indian styles as references she turns to. The Winged Victory of Samothrace is a major statutory influence in her work as well.[7]
Chander’s works can be separated into distinct categories, with the most extensive body of this work being her representation and use of the female torso. The recurring representation of torsos in Chander’s work over the past two decades has been influenced by Indian Temple art.[8] Her depictions of the torso in the 1990s began with the use of kitsch elements, which were sparsely decorated. Her 2017 show was the culmination of the changes in style and choice that have occurred since then, becoming more elaborately decorated, utilising a variety of colours, techniques, and materials.[9]
Since their 1994 debut in Chander’s work, a pantheon of Hindu goddesses have contributed to this female imagery.[7] She first recalls experimenting with temple imagery while in college, between 1978 and 1979, while sketching at temples in Khajuraho, Belur, and Hasan.[7] This was also when Chander began experimenting with depictions of form and figure.[7] The goddesses Kali and Durga feature most prominently, with the former being a destroyer and the latter being a protector. Both have deep meaning and significance within the Hindu faith and pantheon of gods, and are part of the visual vocabulary of Hindu temple art. She highlighted this connection between these figures and her art in her 1997 exhibition Kali in Me/Durga in Me.[1]
On her use of the torso and body, in relation to the feminine, Chander has said:
“The body is important for the woman, it is a symbol of her identity, nay her identity itself. Therefore she constructs a language that enhances this identity through the use of ornamental accessories, be it a piece of lace or sari or buttons. For the ordinary woman, the decorative is not just for the eye of the other but to make them attractive in their own eyes and also a means of self expression and self validation....I started with torsos as I didn’t want to a give any specific identity to the woman hence; so no hands, feet, or face. For me the issues that impact women transcend both time and space they are common and universal and do not relate to any one woman.”[7]
The purported anonymity of her subjects is conflated with deeply personal and historical references in her work. In 2017, Chander combined the torso with photos of Frida Kahlo and temple statuary in her solo show Whispering Torsos.[9] This exhibition is demonstrative of the merging of modern and traditional that Indian art, and Chander, are so known for. The personal also comes into play with the mixed media elements Chander works with. These include personal elements, including photos she has taken, pieces of her own hair, and her son’s toys. Objects include discarded items and items bought in local markets. These elements serve to assist in her exploration of the private and public aspects of femininity and womanhood.[9] Her show Fables Retold explored her relationship with her son, and raising him as a single mother. It reflected not only on the ideas of stories told to children by their mothers, but also her personal experience with her son’s homework time and the difficulties with that. The works used mixed media, including pieces of her son’s broken toys.[2] It contained 105 individual works.[2]
Position in Indian and South Asian Art[edit]
Chander is widely seen as one of the foremost figures of modern Indian art, both nationally and internationally, as well as a face of the feminist art movement in India, despite her not considering herself a feminist.[9][10] She has become internationally renowned, allowing for an expanded international view of the broad spectrum of Indian modern art.[7] Her long lasting career, and being able to work as an artist for her whole life is a direct result of her unwillingness to be seen as lesser by male colleagues and peers, or judged for her circumstances.[2] Chander’s themes and work have made visible the disparity between the treatment of male and female artists and academics, both personally and professionally. Her art remains topical to the climate she is working in, using it as a silent commentary on women and their role in society.
Critical Recognition[edit]
Her reputation has opened doors for her to showcase her work and teaching abroad, with exhibitions of her work having been held in Nepal, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the UK among others.[2] Her art is both critically and commercially acclaimed both within India and internationally, and highly regarded by private collectors and institutions alike. The major awards she has received include AIFACS (All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society) award for the Women’s All India Show, as well as the International Print Biennale Award, in Bradford, England.[5] In 2016, she was also recognized at the University of Connecticut, the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and Mills College in Berkeley, California for her art and contributions.[4]
Solo Exhibitions[4][edit]
| Year | Exhibition |
|---|---|
| 2017 | Whispering Torsos, Visual Arts Gallery at the Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India |
| 2014 | Passage Art, Khan Market, New Delhi, India and The Sandalwood Room, Singapore |
| 2012 | Under the Mango Tree, Berlin, Germany, and Art & Soul, Mumbai, India |
| 2011 | Revisiting the Popular, curated by Sushma Bahl, Art Positive, New Delhi, India and online |
| 2010 | Silent Expression, Icon Gallery, Hyderabad, India
Fables Retold, Galerie Gondwana, Berlin, Germany |
| 2009 | Migrating Memories, curated by Hema Singh Rance, Roman Rolland at Alliance Francaise, New Delhi; Apparao Galleries, Chennai, India |
| 2006 | Kanchan… the story so far, curated by Roobina Karode, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India (organized by the Delhi Art Gallery) |
| 2004 | Flower Power, Arushi Arts, Mumbai, India |
| 2003 | Untitled, at Siddharta Art Gallery, Kathmandu, Nepal |
| 2002 | Dual Worlds, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra, Australia |
| 2001 | Artist of the Month, saffronart.com (online exhibition) |
| 1999 | Untitled, Alliance Francaise, New Delhi; The Fine Art Company, Mumbai; Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore, India |
| 1998 | Untitled, University of Punjab, Patiala, India |
| 1996 | Untitled, Art Inc., New Delhi, India |
| 1995 | Untitled, British Council Division, New Delhi; India International Centre, New Delhi, India |
| 1993 | Untitled, Gallery Ganesha, Delhi, India |
| 1992 | Untitled, Siddhartha Art Gallery, Kathmandu, Nepal |
| 1990 | Untitled, Triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi, India |
| 1986 | Untitled, Miyaska Gallery, Tokyo, Japan |
| 1984 | Untitled, Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi, India |
| 1983 | Untitled, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, India |
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Kanchan Chander, Regarding India, 2018, retrieved 2021-07-06
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 Kanchan Chander Interview by Parul : Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, retrieved 2021-07-06
- ↑ Kanchan Chander : Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi - Audio Visual Presentation, retrieved 2021-07-06
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 "Profile". KanchansArtWorks. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Kanchan Chander : Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi - Audio Visual Presentation, retrieved 2021-07-06
- ↑ A Day in Kanchan's Studio, retrieved 2021-07-06
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 "By Dr.Seema Bawa, Art Historian". KanchansArtWorks. 2015-08-12. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
- ↑ "By Dr. Alka Pandey, Independent Curator/writer". KanchansArtWorks. 2015-08-12. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Kumari, Sangeeta (October 2017). "Whispering Torsos- Loud Motion". Art and Deal. Retrieved 5 July 2021.
- ↑ Narula, Roohi (2018-08-06). "Meet Kanchan Chander: The Artist Who Forces Her Audience To Shed The Male Gaze". Feminism In India. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
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