Ashutosh: When you started as a curator, what were the contexts and references for you?

Veerangana: I began working as a researcher on modern Indian art first under Dr Saryu Doshi and Dr Pheroza Godrej. It was after this that I was on the curatorial team at Bodhi Art Mumbai which is when I started working with younger contemporary artists. I think it was the curiosity of knowing how ideas develop and the intersections at which history comes in to inform a future that made me want to continue curating and researching. History could go back to anything from century old manuscripts and wars to immediate personal memories and recent developments in sound and technology. For instance, a recent exhibition, Future Landing (that is still evolving online at Serendipity Arts virtual space as well as in its physical form this December) carries elements of these various associations with time. There are works that carry images from archives, fictional narratives as well as those that rely on the viewer’s input of sound to create an immediate memory for future keeping. In a way Future Landing acts as a virtual studio and it is this constant learning with change that makes me want to carry on with what I do.

Ashutosh: How has your practice of art writing shaped your curatorial practice and vice versa?

Veerangana: I studied English Literature in college so writing is quite an inherent part of the process of thinking and articulating. I think I still turn to writing even if it’s for myself when I need to simplify my thoughts. Similarly, with artists, exhibitions and curatorial research too, concepts and ideas begin shaping themselves through written abstracts. These ideas begin with broader conversations and organically grow into either specific works or particular aspects of practices. It’s also such a constant learning process about not just the way minds work but also information and the amount there is out there to absorb that there is this humbling realisation of knowing that there’s never any way one can or will know everything. 

Ashutosh: Do you remember the first piece you wrote? What was it about?

Veerangana: One of the earliest pieces I wrote on art was on the depiction of women in Kalighat paintings, this was a paper for my post-grad diploma in Indian aesthetics from Mumbai University.

Ashutosh: In the visual arts, the curatorial practice has, over the years, emerged as the field of glamour, power, and criticism. How do you look at it?

Veerangana: When we look at the history of curating as a contemporary form, especially with reference to the curator, Harald Szeeman’s show, ‘When Attitude Becomes Form’ in 1969, it was almost unheard of for curators to ask an artist for works and then decide the layout themselves. The resistance to another person selecting works based on a theme and placing them in a curated group show then has almost become a norm of how we understand curating today. What you asked about glamour and power, I think that really is quite subjective – curators may sometimes be looked at as power players in deciding who is included in an exhibition they curate or not, but there are several other aspects that are not always factored in. For instance  the voice and say  artists may have in their participation in exhibitions including the display of their works’ inclusion in thought and concept as well as the way the the politics of a place and space may pan out. These choices that artists are making today are perhaps more visible now with them verbalising opinions about other players in the field who they end up collaborating with. 

With curatorial projects, sometimes there are specific existing works of artists that a curator might have in mind and at other times artists may create new or commissioned works in line with their artistic practice and thoughts that respond to an exhibition proposal. 

Internalising A City, Installation Image at Gallery VHC; Image courtesy Gallery VHC

Ashutosh: In an interview that you had with Huma Mulji for PIX posts as a lead up to their issue ‘Passages’, there was a discussion about the narrative tradition of storytelling and Mulji’s work. Do you think that curation is a form of storytelling? What are the elements of telling a story/stories through curation?

Veerangana: Something we all look for (consciously or otherwise) is a form of narrative. It is the way we identify with relationships and situations.So, perhaps in some way we are all storytellers. In the case of a particular work or a series, artists may have selective narratives through which their stories  appear distinct. However, with curatorial outcomes, I try thinking of narrative as a form of dialogue with space that also allows for the artists’ works to be in conversation with each other. Spaces, other than white cubes, layer themselves into exhibition narrative through architecture and history.  The audience is always an additional layer to an exhibition where they come in to read and participate in this narrative structure,  sometimes from a distance and sometimes much closer with interaction and emotion.(Pocket Maps of the Mind: Residues of Memory, Tarq, Mumbai 2014 and Future Landing, Serendipity Arts Festival)

Ashutosh: While working with you as an artist in the exhibition you curated at VHC in Pune, I realised that your work as the curator involved building a visible process to present within the gallery. It was interesting for me to see how you were able to transform a space into a visual narrative for ‘showing’. Obviously, your work includes editing – cancelling as well as accepting certain ideas and objects. How do you decide on the things that can or can not be shown?

Veerangana: Referencing my previous answer we could look at it as tightening the plot or narrative in space for there to be a conversation of the works in space with each other, rather than an alienation. There are multiple decisions and factors that influence this. Most importantly it’s the work itself, then the space and the possibilities it offers for scale and nature of the work might influence which artists’ works may or may not work, so it’s all correlated in some way. For instance, for the Contemporary Sultanate in Delhi at Qutub Haveli Serai in 2012, some of the artists including Zuleikha Choudhuri and Arunkumar HG created works that were integrated into the architecture of the building. The artists’ trajectory of work and the personal dialogue or statement they make through their practices also need to resonate with the curatorial concept. So it is a continuous dialogue. There are of course so many artists and practitioners one may want to work with, but this may not always be possible and it ends up being dialogues that are ongoing but harvested at different points in time.

The Contemporary Sultanate, 2012, Qutub Haveli Serai with Exhibit 320, Zuleikha Chaudhuri and Sean Curley, At the Full Extent of My Reach, Installation Image, Image courtesy Exhibit 320 and Zuleikha Chaudhuri

Ashutosh: It looks like the collaboration has been at the heart of your curatorial practice and research. In your research work, you looked at how collaboration happens between various fields of artistic practices. Obviously, you might have thought of breaking away from the gallery spaces or institutional spaces in order to extend into public spaces. How does this help in exploring alternative ways of looking at the relationship between art, artist and universe?

Veerangana: Creating and curating in this sense can be looked at as inherently collaborative. What I have been interested in is the trans and cross-disciplinary exchange of skill and knowledge when looking at what we end up defining as art. If we look back at early forms of painting and photography, these were very closely linked with science and then at some point the need to separate and define differences became so stark that we stopped recognising the fact that as beings we spill over into multiple disciplines. And, it is in recognising these spills that we also collaborate and not isolate.

Ashutosh: How has the research helped you explore different ways of looking at the relationship between art, artist and universe?

Veerangana: I feel with research, it’s also growing and feeding a thirst for knowledge and learning that’s important. For instance when referencing research around photography and images, yes, the conversations and learnings from artists deeply feed into this. However, it’s also other parallels such as a reading group with Nepal Picture Library that I had participated in or a course on Film Photography that I’ve just completed at BICAR (Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research) that continue to expand the relationship of research within the arts and beyond.

Ashutosh: What are you trying to create as a curatorial space by offering a web portal as a virtual studio for five practitioners at a time in ‘Future Landing’ in Serendipity Festival?

Veerangana: Future Landing was conceptualised at a time during the pandemic when it was almost impossible to think of having any form of a physical exhibition. We did not have any control over time or the outcome of how we were going to move forward. This also led to the question of who and how much control do we have and maintain as curators in exhibitions. So, Future Landing was also about this idea of giving up control and in a way moving into learning through what the artists chose to put out on their platforms through their backends. And moving forward, the second layer or drip of Future Landing is artists who have been nominated to participate from the first group. So, with each layer, the curator and the core team move further away from control. The reason why it’s referred to as a virtual studio is that there is no fixed way of experiencing the works, it’s up to the artists when they decide to change something. It could be just an image or an entire project. 

Ashutosh:How is it going to be different when you would be physically curating ‘Future Landing’? Will it be repetition or re-interpretation of once repeatedly experienced work of art? In which ways would it be new for artists to repeat their virtual experience within a non-virtual location/landscape?

Veerangana: So, one of the things that Future Landing set out to do was avoid a virtual translation of the physical and now similarly the exhibition this December will avoid a literal translation of the virtual to the physical. Without revealing too much, some artists such as Farah Mulla and Abhinay Khoparzi have opted to expand on their online projects whereas some artists such as The Packet and Studio Oleomingus have moved away into variations of ideas – just as they might do in their studios too when working on something new. There are of course certain visuals that we are trying to carry forward so as to maintain the aesthetic of the landing page of Future Landing and the limit to which an artist may be able to transform their space entirely in a short span of time may be difficult in a physical space, but elements of interaction, audience experience and this idea of time and change are definitely some things that will carry forward in the translation of form and space.

Ashutosh Potdar: As we see it today, the role of the curator is getting more and more diverse and has been continuously shifting. One has to pay attention to the historical processes and socio-economic contexts while designing new work within a gallery or outside. That way, there is a critical space dynamic between a curated space and the outside world. What according to you is to be a curator and curation today within such a dynamic space?

For me, I think listening and growing with the acceptance of change are crucial. One needs to think beyond the parameters of control and move into realms of knowledge sharing and growth to be able to expand dialogues and collaborations.

Ashutosh: Like a work of art – a painting or a play- doesn’t get over after one sees/experiences it once, does a curation remain in a loop after a show is done? How do you see the dialogue between curation, space, viewer and society?

With curation, it depends on the context in which it exists whether it’s in a museum or in a space that reflects audience movement and history, whether its active viewing with interactions or passive viewing with distance – all of these factors play into how one may see or remember a show. Memory is very malleable and in these instances  the experience of viewing itself is layered with preconditioned notions of looking. There are residual elements of curatorial projects such as catalogues and images that carry forward, but it’s difficult to think about a permanent physicality especially with space when it comes to curation. So much of what curating might do involves fuelling ideas and dialogues. If we were to consider the extension of these conversations of space visuals moving into future projects, collaborations and friendships, yes these feedback loops are ever present.