ANW I DELHI I NOV 21, 2015 I 1st Published 1130 PM
January 2016 will see an exciting programme of cultural
activity across three cities - Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi – as a part of Medicine Corner. The programme
is an initiative of one of the UK’s most innovative cultural venues, Wellcome
Collection - part of the Wellcome Trust, a global health charity. Medicine Corner explores India’s rich plurality of cultures of
medicine, healing and well-being through exhibitions, live public events and
educational outreach.
❖ Mumbai: ‘Tabiyat: Medicine and Healing in India’ An Exhibition at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai | 12 January – 28 March 2016
❖ Kolkata: Jeevanchakra at Akar Prakar
Gallery, Kolkata | 18 January - 15 February 2016
❖ New
Delhi: Workshop and live performance by BLOT! at the British Council | 22
January
The centrepiece of Medicine
Corner is Tabiyat:
Medicine and Healing in India, at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu
Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai. Through a stunning array of antiquities and
contemporary material culture, the exhibition explores the history and modern
practice in India of sustaining human health. Exhibits include: sculptures,
clothing, textiles, decorative wrestling clubs, manuscripts, intimate personal
items such as combs and foot scrubbers, medical instruments, domestic utensils,
oil paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, plaques and board games
(including a snakes and ladders board from the late 18th century - the game has
Indian roots).
Tabiyat takes
visitors to four generic locations: The
Shrine –
to encounter the role of spiritual belief in healing; The Home – examining lifecycle and the family as the
key transmitter of values and practical knowledge for living well and living
long; The Street – charting public health, the hidden histories
of health commerce and cultural practices such as chewing paan; and The Clinic – treating India as a key site in world history
for enquiry into the nature of body and mind and for different analytical
models of understanding, representing and treating the body.
The exhibition takes a multi-faceted approach to its subject,
drawing on multiple historical, artistic and ethnographic resources. It
includes magnificent Indian works from the UK, never before exhibited in their
land of origin, combining them in novel juxtapositions with material from CSMVS
and private collections in India. Contemporary vernacular art has also been specially
commissioned and acquired for this richly varied show: an aesthetically
seductive, intellectually rich mix of art, science, history and the ordinary
made extraordinary. Star exhibits in Tabiyat include the Ayurvedic Man, the only known
historical illustration of the interior of the human body as understood in
Ayurveda.
In curatorial dialogue with Tabiyat is an exhibition at Akar Prakar Gallery in
Kolkata: Jeevanchakra, which
explores, poetically, the life cycle of the human body and its contact with
medical practice. It consists of photographs, video, paintings and multi-media
installations by leading contemporary Indian artists. Birth, ageing, disease
and death are universal phenomena. Jeevanchakra shows that they also have culturally
specific aspects. The historic, economic, social and political conditions of
particular places shape conceptions of the body and inform rites around it. For
example, childbirth is deeply affected by differing access to medicine and by
the particular practices of rural and urban India.
A set of exquisite silver gelatin prints by photographer
Gauri Gill shows the key, intimate moments as a child is born on the sandy
floor of a desert home in remote rural Rajasthan. The child is born at the
hands of a dai,
a traditional midwife. One of these photographs, showing the moment the
umbilical cord is severed, is exhibited at majestic scale at Tabiyat in Mumbai, both to resonate with the sequence
shown in Kolkata and as a work in its own right, highlighting the role of the dai in
Indian civilization. In addition to Gauri Gill, other leading contemporary
Indian artists with works in the show include Nilima Sheikh, Sheba Chhachhi,
Mithu Sen and Paula Sengupta. The exhibition is curated by Latika Gupta.
In Delhi, the British Council will host a workshop and live
performance by BLOT! (a Delhi based mixed media and music performance duo).
BLOT! were commissioned by Wellcome Collection to create a video to launch
Medicine Corner earlier this year in Chennai. Their research has led to a
larger project, Trick
or Treat? which
uses media arts to examine India’s vast parallel health system of informal
practices such as street dentistry. In wry, playful but insightful ways, BLOT!
raises momentous issues of access, affordability and equity.
Across these cities and across different cultural forms, Medicine Corner addresses collisions such as those between
ancient and modern, formal and informal, Indian and imported. The programme
complements the way in which Wellcome Collection uses art and exhibitions in
order to draw connections between understanding oneself, one’s civilisation and
humanity.
Ratan Vaswani, Project Head Medicine Corner, Co-curator Tabiyat, commented:
“Wellcome Collection has a
magnificent library full not just of manuscripts but also amazing historical
paintings and other wonders. Because Wellcome Collection has global interests,
it made sense to look at the society and civilisation that has the most varied,
complex and plural medical culture - India. We want
to have a conversation with India, particularly with its creative community and
we want to investigate how ordinary Indians stay well, often in challenging
circumstances. But we’re not trying to influence public health outcomes. We
want to make a cultural impact and explore the extraordinary in everyday life
across a variety of cultural forms.”
Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director General of CSMVS, commented:
“Tabiyat is a fine
exploration of the connected worlds of science and culture. Both the subject
and the approach taken in presenting it are new at CSMVS and will, I believe,
prove exciting for our growing audience.”
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