How do specific contexts in which exhibitions of art from India have taken place around the world shape their reception and intervention? What politics of presence has the global circulation of art out of India engendered? What is this politics suggestive of in the context of the art world and other spheres of life in India? Drawing upon a wider project on the global spread of modern and contemporary art from India observed at museums, galleries and biennales in Asia, Europe and the US, this lecture goes to the heart of these questions. In particular, it examines the exhibition After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947-1997 as a site for the interplay of national and non-national compulsions as they were staged in New York – one of the most influential art world locations globally.
Manuela Ciotti completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). She is currently Associate Professor of Global Studies at Aarhus University and Framing the Global Fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington. Ciotti has extensive research experience on India, spanning almost two decades, which has resulted in a rich body of publications on the topics of modernity, subaltern communities, gender, politics and the art world. She has published several essays in leading journals and is the author of Retro-Modern India. Forging the Low-caste Self (2010).