When All That Is Solid Melts into Air: Exploring the Intersection of the Folk and the Modern in Postcolonial India
March 4–May 24, 2020 at BAMPFA, 2155 Center Street Berkeley.
When All That Is Solid Melts into Air tells the story of the momentous social and artistic transformations that unfolded in the relationship between the “modern” and the “folk” within the political and historical context of postcolonial India. The largest body of work in the exhibition comes from BAMPFA’s extraordinary collection of contemporary folk art by Mithila, Warli, and Gond artists. Modern and contemporary artists represented include Sunil Janah, Gauri Gill, Rajesh Vangad, Jagdish Swaminathan, and filmmakers Nina Paley and Amit Dutta.
When All That Is Solid Melts into Air: Exploring the Intersection of the Folk and the Modern in Postcolonial India is organized by UC Berkeley History of Art Assistant Professor Atreyee Gupta and BAMPFA Director and Chief Curator Lawrence Rinder with Associate Curator Stephanie Cannizzo and undergraduate and graduate students in the seminar The Folk and/in the Modern: Critical Concepts + Curatorial Practicum in Twentieth-Century South Asian Art. Student curators are Uttara Chaudhuri, Shuli Fang, Yiman Hu, Vanessa Jackson, Michelle Kwhak, Ashley Pattison-Scott, Ariana Pemberton, Saif Radi, Ryan Serpa, and Ellen Song.