Karkhana: A Studio in Rajasthan

Karkhana

A Studio in Rajasthan

WA SWO X . WA SWO

Karkhana A Studio in Rajasthan A well-known figure of the Indian art scene, Waswo X. Waswo was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the USA. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Center for Photography, and Studio Marangoni, The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. The artist has lived and travelled in India for over twenty years, and has made his home in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the past sixteen. There he collaborates with a variety of local artists, exploring themes that range from serious portraiture and “mock ethnography” to deep mediations on the mutually intertwining nature of “Otherness”. In his art and writings, he often assumes the role of “The Evil Orientalist”. His books include, India Poems: The Photographs, published by Gallerie Publishers in 2006, Men of Rajasthan, published by Serindia Contemporary in 2011 (hardcover 2014), Photowallah published by Tasveer, India, in 2016, and Gauri Dancers, published by Mapin, India, in 2019.

He is represented by Gallery Espace and Gallery Latitude 28, both in New Delhi.

WA SWO X . WA SWO

Karkhana A Studio in Rajasthan

WA SWO X . WA SWO

Karkhana A Studio in Rajasthan WA SWO X . WA SWO

First published in India in 2022 by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd 706 Kaivanna, Panchvati, Ellisbridge Ahmedabad 380006 INDIA T: +91 79 40 228 228 • F: +91 79 40 228 201 E: mapin@mapinpub.com • www.mapinpub.com International Distribution North America ACC Art Books T: +1 800 252 5231 • F: +1 212 989 3205 E: ussales@accartbooks.com • www.accartbooks.com/us/ United Kingdom John Rule Art Book Distribution 40 Voltaire Road, London SW4 6DH T: +44 020 7498 0115 E: johnrule@johnrule.co.uk • www.johnrule.co.uk Rest of the World Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd

Foreword and Introduction © Giles Tillotson and Annapurna Garimella Story and Images © Waswo X. Waswo Drone Photography © Rajesh Soni

All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The moral rights of Waswo X. Waswo, Giles Tillotson and Annapurna Garimella as authors of this work are asserted.

ISBN: 978-93-85360-99-2 Copyediting: Ashwati Franklin Proofreading: TO COME/Mapin Editorial Research: Annapurna Garimella Design: Moksha Carambiah Production: TO COME/Mapin Design Studio Printed in India

Full title page: The Distance (detail), 2021 Waswo X. Waswo, R. Vijay, and Shankar Kumawat; Gouache and gold on wasli; Private Collection

“In India, everything is possible.”

Acknowledgements

1

Foreword GILES TILLOTSON

3

Karkhana: An Introduction ANNAPURNA GARIMELLA

7

Note

17

A Possible Udaipur Morning

21

Another Possible Udaipur Morning

35

Two Possible Mornings

57

The Many Possible Days of Rajesh Soni

85

The Many Possible Days of R. Vijay

113

A Possible Udaipur Afternoon

161

A Possible Varda Evening

185

The Night

205

The Dream

212

Image Index

238

Exhibitions

244

Acknowledgements

A book whose main text is an extremely personal narrative may seem self-generated, with little input from others. The truth is, there are many people to thank. As I wrote each of the chapters you are about to read, I shared them with the Karkhana team, making sure that my remembrances were sound, my descriptions of Udaipur accurate, that the portrayals of my collaborators were fair, and that I had not inadvertently typed any words or sentences that would give offence. Thus, the team became my first body of critics. I’d like to thank them first: Rajesh Soni, Rakesh Vijayvargiya, Shankar Kumawat, Dalpat and Banti Jingar, Ganpat Mali, and, though he is not officially a part of the team, Chirag Kumawat. None of the works within this book would be possible without these talented artists and loyal friends.

I must also mention my long-time studio assistant, Jay Prakash, who, with Ganpat Mali, has worked through the years to arrange the sets of my photographs, and also the people of the village of Varda who have always been so helpful and warm to me, among them: Manohar Singh, Ram Singh, Sharu Singh and Sumer Singh. Additionally, I’d like to thank the author and art historian Annapurna Garimella for over a year’s worth of consultation, as well as her fabulous introduction to the history and concept of “karkhana” throughout the centuries and in current times. A huge thank you to Giles Tillotson, the keenly perceptive curator and historian of Indian art, and especially Indian photography, who kindly penned such a lucid and penetrating foreword. My thanks to editor Ashwati Franklin for her intelligent, eagle-eyed edits, and the gifted designer, Moksha Carambiah, who has made this book so visually alive. I would also like to thank Bipin G. Shah of Mapin Publishing for enthusiastically putting this book to print. Lastly, I’d like to thank my partner Thomas E. Livieri for his usual faith in me, and his never-ending patience.

A special thanks to the galleries and gallerists who have made this book possible: Renu Modi Gallery Espace, New Delhi Bhavna Kakar Latitude 28, New Delhi

1

2

Foreword GILES TILLOTSON

Two things immediately strike us when we contemplate a work of art made in Waswo X. Waswo’s Karkhana. The first is technical excellence. The photographs (to start with them) are superbly composed (by Waswo) and subtly hand-tinted (by Rajesh Soni). Compositional balance and colour harmony are as important in photography as in painting, and it is their attention to these matters, as much as the actual colouring, that gives the photographs their painterly quality. The ‘miniature’ paintings themselves – executed by R. Vijay, often with magnificent borders by Shankar Kumawat – reach the highest levels of technical accomplishment currently available in India. The patient brushwork, the unerring drawing, and the considered colouring are so far ahead of the quotidian standard of modern miniature painting as to leave us amazed as well as delighted.

I mention this technical aspect first because the second point of impact – which arises from the subject matter – is so powerful that we might miss the first. In visual art as in music, we are more inclined to notice disharmony than harmony. Disharmony trips us up; technical failure leaves us feeling let down. Harmony hurries us on with a free pass, reassuring us of its competence and success, leaving us no time to pause and consider how the trick was done.

So let us come, then, to the second element, which is the range of historical reference in the works. The creators of these paintings and photographs are alert to their position in history, and eager to point this out to us, to contemplate and discuss it. What does it mean to be a miniaturist now?

What does it mean to be a photographer? This second question might seem less urgent, but we would be wrong to suppose so. For sure, photography is a more recent medium than miniature painting, and one that we all engage in daily, so on the surface it should be less problematic.

But photography has its own complex history (coming up to two hundred years of it now) and so the manner in which thinking photographers situate themselves in relation to that history is no facile question.

3

The historical references operate on more than one level. Let’s start with the small-scale, the visual allusions to the past, the quotations from both Western and Indian art history. In the following pages you will meet a number of familiar figures, including Michelangelo’s David, Botticelli’s Venus, Caravaggio’s Bacchus, Abul Hassan’s Jahangir, and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe. There are some familiar beasts too, including Ustad Mansur’s zebra, Henri Rousseau’s tiger and M.F. Husain’s horses. No doubt you will spot others. To provide a check-list would spoil the fun. These allusions, like in-jokes, either flatter our knowledge or leave us embarrassed by our ignorance or poor memory. Either way, they prompt us to consider the artists’ position (and ours) in a broad cultural and historical landscape.

Sometimes a lesser known source is used and transformed, as in the series of over-painted plates from George F. Atkinson’s Curry & Rice (1859), where Waswo’s fedora-wearing alter ego is inserted into scenes of life in the provinces of colonial India, insolently swigging from a bottle or parading his poodle. Atkinson’s depiction of typical personalities and daily events in ‘Our Station’ was already satirical, so the fact that the Fedora Man turns up here, rather than in some more serious or triumphal depiction of, for example, the ‘Storming of Seringapatam’, serves as a reminder that even the heterodox and the subversive are open to question and review. More about that in a minute.

The hand-painted photographs, though by now very diverse in their subject matter, are always in conversation with historical practice in Rajasthan.

Painted backdrops are a common feature in portrait photography made in India from the 1860s up until the turn of the century. Such portraits were made in studios, not out of doors, and the painted scene stands in for the absent landscape. To enhance the illusion, it was common procedure to add natural features – a few plants, perhaps, and straw on the studio floor in front of the backdrop – so that visually there is a continuity between the artificial and the real, with the subject placed in between. Further props might allude to the sitter’s occupation. The Karkhana’s backdrops (painted

by Dalpat Jingar) recall this precedent, but playfully. The varying degrees of naturalism in the representation of landscape and buildings does not permit us to forget that none of it is real, while the self-regarding poses of some of the subjects introduce a spirit captured from twentieth-century small-town Indian studio photography.

4

The element of historical reference in the work of the Karkhana, then, is never solemn. It is always irreverent. This is not to say that it is dismissive, for the irreverence extends to self-satire. It is cheeky and witty; it draws us in and makes us complicit. All of which may lead us to a further question: granted there is wit, is there also wisdom?

Is there a connection between the playfulness of the Karkhana’s art and Waswo’s politics? Anyone who follows Waswo on Facebook will be aware that he is a vigorous and tireless defender of critical thinking, of the right to question and to be in doubt, to challenge the certainties of the emerging new orthodoxies on such matters as intersectionality and critical race theory. Some, of course, agree with him. Others may be inclined to see him as the incorrigible grump reaching for well-established clichés about ‘political correctness gone mad’, or protesting ‘the cancel culture of the woke brigade’. Against such critics, Waswo has got in first by cheerfully identifying himself as the ‘Evil Orientalist’. If we try and turn that manoeuvre back on him, saying ‘Yes, indeed, you are precisely the evil Orientalist that you admit to being’, then we will hopelessly miss the humour of it. In a grotesquely polarised debate, if we find any ground on which to stand for nuance, we had better pave it with satire, including self-satire. In this connection, we may note that a recurring motif in the pages that follow is a man flying a kite.

Tempting as it is to leave the matter hanging like that, there is one more thing that must be said. Commenting on the work of his team members – including Rajesh, Rakesh, Dalpat and Shankar – Waswo compliments them for their growth, the broadening of their skill and their vision over the duration of their collaboration. It remains for someone else to add that they in turn have broadened his. There is perhaps no other artist of foreign origin who has engaged so long and so deeply with Indian art practice and its practitioners, resulting in works that are so firmly rooted in the landscape.

5

6

Dalpat Jingar’s Workshop, 2021 Chirag Kumawat; Pigments on wasli; Waswo Collection

Karkhana: An Introduction ANNAPURNA GARIMELLA

Karkhana is one of those words that moves up, down, or in between, depending on where readers place themselves. A Persian word, it has entered Urdu, Hindi and many other Indian languages long ago and has come to mean “factory” over the long years of colonial rule. But its deep association still lies in the space of the workshop, the kind that first developed in the Sultanate and Mughal eras in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. Waswo X. Waswo tells us that he likes the range of meanings that the word “karkhana” encapsulates.

This book is a journey into Waswo’s Karkhana in Udaipur and he reminisces about the team of artists he has worked with for over 15 years. The account flows as if they live in a fantastic pre-modern world as well as in a classic American rock band, as Waswo likes to call the group sometimes. Either way, in his telling, the present nearly always recedes into the past. There is both the quality of the fable as well as a Ruskin Bondesque bittersweetness.

In structure, the narrative is tuned to evoke imaginary manuscripts produced in an improbable courtly workshop. It is like a barahmasa (a text recounting 12 months of a year), like a ritusamhara (a triumphant display of the seasons) or a chronicle, such as the Ain-i-Akbari, of an artist’s life among other makers. The book is a summation of the most significant period of Waswo’s artistic output during which he has achieved success, with all the unplannable grace that life sometimes offers, late in his career, in a place far from where he began but which he now calls home.

I have been a privileged visitor and an invited interlocutor to this workshop for more than a decade, starting from its early days. I began paying attention to Waswo’s Karkhana when I was asked to write an article for The Park Magazine (No. 4, 2009), an issue dedicated to the idea that “small is big.” As an art historian who works on both pre-modern and contemporary art, my thoughts immediately went to what is usually called contemporary “miniature” painting, a medium that was going through the beginning of a grand efflorescence then. Shahzia Sikander, Saira Wasim and many others

7

from Pakistan, Francesco Clemente, Olivia Fraser and Desmond Lazaro working in Europe, England and India, Mithu Sen and Nilima Sheikh in Delhi and Baroda—just a few of the artists who have engaged with the scales, formats, forms, media and textures associated with historic Indic painting.

The idea of a karkhana has been around since the earliest Sultanate. It meant workshop or manufactory but more widely also covered “stores, the royal court, the sultan’s personal service and the animal stables, etc.”1 In a broad sense, one could perhaps understand the Sultanate karkhana as an important site where the court was produced and materialised in the broadest sense of this word. A ruler, like the Evil Orientalist, needs extraordinary production to imagine and embody his subjectivity.

Products could not be taken directly from the bazaar to the court; karkhanas mediated semi-finished materials such as cloth for stitching in the jamadarkhana (wardrobe) or transformed raw materials into fully finished works. The historian R.C. Jauhari notes that royal karkhanas operated with fixed annual grants from the court or were a fluctuating expense, depending on how much the court ordered in any given year. Sumbul Halim Khan, writing about the karkhanas of Amer/Jaipur, gives us more insights into how Rajput nobility at the Mughal court manufactured products. 2 There were 36 karkhanas, each of which had a superintendent who in turn had a next-in-command; this was a transferrable position. Karkhanas also employed accountants and security guards. The Jaipur karkhanas of Sawai Jai Singh’s time produced items not only for his court but also made objects such as palanquins, to be gifted to or purchased by other kings and shahs.

Sumit, in another essay on the block printing workshop at the Jaipur court, tells us that that various other royal karkhanas provided cloth or other objects such as earthen vessels to the chhapakhana (printing press) for printing. 3 The state purchased and supplied them with all materials. Fulltime artisans were few, and more were called in to the workshop when there was a need for additional hands or when a specialised skill was required.

8

1

R.C. Jauhari, “Royal Karkhanas of the Tughluq Sultan,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 27 (1965): 192–196.

2

Sumbul Halim Khan, “Karkhanas of a Mughal Noble – Evidence from the Amber/Jaipur Records,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 52 (1991): 432–438.

3

Sumit, “An Eighteenth Century Survey of Jaipur “Chhapakhana” based on Jaipur ‘Karkhanajat’ Records,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 73 (2012): 421–430.

R. Vijay’s Studio, 2021 Chirag Kumawat; Pigments on wasli; Waswo Collection

Note

This book was envisioned many years ago. Like most artists, I’ve dreamt of some sort of published summation of my work, but the time never felt right. Work always continued, the oeuvre got larger and larger, and various smaller volumes that focused on only certain aspects of my work saw publication along the way. Now, as I approach sixty-eight years of age, the time seems right, though this book still does not seem like an ending; only another chapter in a very long story.

Truthfully, it is not “my work”. At least not completely. It is just as much the work of Rajesh Soni and R. Vijay, my long-time collaborators and friends.

It is the work of Shankar Kumawat and Dalpat Jingar who joined us on our journey into the realm of the Indian contemporary miniature. It is the work of artists and craftsmen with less involvement, but whose contributions helped me see finalised what was in my mind’s eye: Zainul Khan, Anil and Indu Atrish, Chiman Dangi, Jagdish Yaddav, and more than I can possibly remember or name. It is the work of all-round assistant Ganpat Mali, forever at my side, guiding me, keeping my spirits up, and chastising me when I need it. It is the work of Jay Prakash, who alternates between cook and studio assistant.

I had advice not to title this book Karkhana. I was told is it a cheapening name, as in modern-day Hindi it simply means “factory”, but it is also the name assumed by traditional painting ateliers in the tradition of Persian, Mughal and Indian miniature workshops. As a Westerner, the term “factory” does not disturb me, since I grew up in an age when Andy Warhol named his New York studio the same.

Waswo X. Waswo at Home, 2018 Meropie Mitrou; Digital photograph

17

A Possible Udaipur Morning

I’m in my jeans, in my favourite chair, surveying my living room. I like this chair since there is a bookshelf at its side which is a handy place to rest my drink, and from it I can see not only the art I’ve collected over the years, but nearly every corner of the apartment. I drink my standard morning Nescafé with so many slow sips and long pauses that it gets cold before half empty. It has milk; no sugar. In the US, I always loved café lattes, and in Europe my preference is cappuccino with lots of sugar, but here, in India, I prefer the concoction served on railway platforms, roadside dhabas, and the occasional thela. Nescafé is a very plebian drink, the drink of average Indians if they choose coffee rather than chai. I hold off on the sugar at home, because I’m simply getting too fat.

Ganpat pushes the door open at 9 a.m. sharp. I always wait for his entrance, as he never fails to bring that infectious smile and those mischievous eyes that I love him for. He says “Good morning, Chacha Ji!” and heads directly to the kitchen to pop up some toast that he drizzles with microwave-melted butter and serves to me with orange juice poured from a waxy carton. The smell of the slightly charred toast still drifts from the kitchen as I eat the fruit salad prepared by Jay Prakash the day before: kela, mosambi, cheeku, raisins, a toss of cashews. After straightening up some bills and invoices lying on my dining table, Ganpat plops onto the sofa, and we talk. It is getting hot outside, as it always does, just after Holi.

We decide to bike down to check on Shankar, our border artist, before the heat and sun crescendo, as they do each dry season, into a silent duet of blinding dryness and light.

We ride along the lake of Fateh Sagar, Ganpat’s Enfield growling between our legs. The view across the calm, blue waters never fails to remind why I love Udaipur. The floating white solar observatory can be seen as soon as we pass the Fateh Singh dam, and then Nehru Island, with its many exotic (that word!) chhattri, and always at least one boat somnambulantly

View Over Udaipur, 2021 Rajesh Soni; Digital drone photograph; Courtesy: Rajesh Soni

21

“No two can look the same”, I explained. “The palace itself will be the same, but each will be very different with colours”.

Dalpat shifted from photo-backdrop painter to assistant miniaturist in early 2015. At that time, I was imagining one of the most ambitious works we ever made: an eighteen-panel suite to be titled Chaos in the Palace, which would explore what I felt was the multitude of attacks upon secular, humanist values that were beginning to emerge from all sides, in many places of the world. It would be a mammoth undertaking for Rakesh (R. Vijay) and me; perhaps too much to complete in time for the proposed exhibition date. I had grown to know of Dalpat’s skill at producing repetitive, tourist quality palaces rather quickly and in numbers large enough to keep the shopkeeper clients in the tourist bazaar well stocked. Now I had an impetus to put this talent to work. I had seen a painting by Shaikh Zada of Western Uzbekistan, from a manuscript of poetry, the Bustan (orchard) by Sa’di.

The image I photocopied was called Sa’di’s Visit to an Indian Temple. It dated from 1531. I realised that if I removed the figures from this image, the background was perfect for the new suite that I was imagining. Carefully, I explained to Dalpat that I needed this palace interior painted eighteen times, exactly identical, but with each containing a unique array of bright colours. “No two can look the same”, I explained. “The palace itself will be the same, but each will be very different with colours”.

40

41

54

180

181

Everything changes, all we hold important will be forgotten, and the places and people we treasure will eventually return to stardust.

History tells us how far economies can fall, and how easily our happy days of freedom from want, and freedom of spirit, can turn into nightmares of deprivation and tyranny. The world does not remain fixed. Civilizations crumble, cities change for better and worse, and life as we remember it will seldom be the same again. Udaipur has been a magical gift to my heart and soul. I dearly hope it will never change, but of course I realise it will. It is the passage of life and time. Everything changes, all we hold important will be forgotten, and the places and people we treasure will eventually return to stardust.

I’ve had too much whiskey now. I’m such a sentimental old fool. My heart just wants to say this: the people in these stories, the artists of this Karkhana, have been the most important people in my life.

If this book has failed in any way, it is for not conveying that deep sense of love I feel for these friends who have helped me grow artistically and spiritually. I can’t thank them enough.

208

209

The Dream

I am in warm water, sliding my feet through long green lotus stems.

Unopened pink buds are hissing with swarming insects. My toes keep getting caught on the stems that reach deep into the muck. Ganpat extends a hand, and pulls me through into an open space with quiet sparkling ripples. Chirag is there too, as are Rajesh and Rakesh. Dalpat and Banti paint my hair wet with an unbelievably wide brush. They are just having fun.

Smoke is covering the water now. I know this is Pichola Lake, but it is not.

There are taller and more ornate white buildings, each with jharokhas and mihrabs and shiny, multi-coloured windows. There are wooden gates that open into markets of basket weavers and potters, dhar-wallahs sharpening Mewar swords, horses drawing tongas and elephants loaded with peepal leaves. Temple bells are sounding. It is just after sunset. I suddenly see Shankar standing before me. His arms are outstretched as if on a cross, but tilted down, like that famous photograph of Francesco Clemente. He is very pale white. He offers me a beedi. We smoke together, there, standing in the smoke-covered water. There is a funeral pyre burning not far from the shore. I feel in my bones the heat. I somehow know this fire is mine, but Shankar shakes his head. He knows something I do not. We walk further, glide, the entire team, happy but silent. We seem to communicate by just thinking in Mewari. Young boys are jumping off a bridge, and others from a cenotaph. Jay Prakash is suddenly with us, wearing a golden crown. Happy crocodiles slowly paddle past, but we feel no fear. They are smiling. The water is so warm. It feels so good. We all can swim. We almost can fly.

Udaipur has morphed into a maze of small canals made of stone. Over their sides cascade bougainvillea. I can smell frangipani, and marigolds, and the sweet smoke from cow-dung fires. In the distance, there is a village of mud huts and straw roofs. A Maharana floats by us on a Gangaur boat. An enormous temple looms upon a hill. We all climb the stone steps, gently pushing aside long-tailed grey monkeys. We are all dripping and half naked.

212

From the temple entrance, Udaipur looks itself: heavenly, beautiful. The fruit bats have begun to fly, lazily and gracefully, as they do each night.

As I walk into the temple, I find myself alone. Where have the others gone?

My heart pains and a sadness grips me. The temple is no longer a temple. It is a vast and ancient library. All of time’s memories are collected here, and immediately I see a couple of my books in a young couple’s hands. They are paging through them carefully. “Did Udaipur actually look like that?” the woman is whispering to the man, “There were actually two lakes?” she asks, as if filled with surprise.

“And look how small the buildings were back then, the man points out.

This was back in the days they still made paintings here.” It is then that I notice how aged and frail these two books of mine are. I want to cry out, but cannot open my lips. Like my books, I am frozen in time.

A stern-faced librarian comes near the young couple and tells them to lower their voices. “Oh! I can find you much better books than those! This author was no scholar. He knew nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She grabs the books and roughly shoves them back onto the shelf.

It is then that I feel Ganpat and Chirag and Rajesh and Rakesh pulling me back, out the door, and back to the view of the shimmering lake bathed in a sunset glow. “Come Chacha,” they all seem to say, “Let us swim together.

Let us swim to the secret lake.”

And we swim. The night is starry and endless. The moon is a Krishna and Radha moon and the Palace glows enchantedly golden. The water is warm, and I am with my friends. We had once always worked. We had done the best we could. It is now the time to just let things be.

213

Exhibitions

244

S E L E C T E D S O LO E X H I B I T I O N S

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Gauri Dancers, The Opera of Mewar, presented by Latitude 28 at Museo Camera, New Delhi, 2021 We are Always Working, Latitude 28, New Delhi, 2020 Bodies of Work, Gallery OED, Kochi, 2020 Gauri Dancers, Amdavad Ni Gufa, Ahmedabad, 2019 Like a Leaf in Autumn, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2019 Ateliér v Rádžastáne, Central European House of Photography, Bratislava, 2017 Photowallah, Tasveer/TARQ, Mumbai, 2017 Photowallah, Tasveer/National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 2016 Photowallah, Tasveer/Exhibit 320, New Delhi, 2016 Waswo X. Waswo: Photographs, Gallerie Minsky, Paris, 2015 Confessions of an Evil Orientalist, Obscura Festival of Photography, Penang, 2015 A Day in the Country, Indigo Blue Art, Singapore, 2015 Sleeping through the Museum, official collateral project of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, 2014 retro-spective, Harrington Street Arts Centre, Kolkata, 2014 Hanuman – New Myths, Serindia Gallery Annex, Bangkok, 2014 Sleeping through the Museum, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2014 s-e-p-a-r-a-t-i-o-n-s, solo booth sponsored by Gallery Espace, India Art Fair, 2014 Tinted by Tradition, Indigo Blue Art, Singapore, 2013 May be Removed at Will, Alliance Française de Delhi, 2012 Confessions of an Evil Orientalist, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2011 Tinted by Tradition, City Palace Museum, Udaipur, 2011 Men of Rajasthan, Serindia Gallery, Bangkok, 2011 New Myths, Bombay Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2010 A Studio in Rajasthan, Coromandel Art Gallery, Pondicherry, 2010 A Studio in Rajasthan, Galleria Joyce, Genoa, 2009 A Studio in Rajasthan, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2009 A Studio in Rajasthan, Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi, 2008 India Poems: The Photographs of Waswo X. Waswo, Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, 2007 India Poems: The Photographs, travelling exhibition at Alliance Française de Bangalore, Alliance Française de Goa, and Alliance Française de Colombo, 2003

Visions of India: From the Colonial to the Contemporary, works from the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) Bangalore, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, 2021 Classical Radical, Museo d’Arte Orientale, Torino, 2021 Cartography of Narratives, Latitude 28, Bikaner House, New Delhi, 2019 BODY, Shanghumugham Art Museum, Thiruvananthapuram, 2019 Babur ki Gai, Latitude 28, New Delhi, 2018 Laughing in the Vernacular, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2017 50/50 – Photography to Digital Imaging and Back, Birla Academy of Arts and Culture, Kolkata, 2017 Culture of the Streets, Aicon Gallery, New York, 2017 Morphology of the Archive, Museum of Goa (MOG), Goa, 2016 Excavation / Eruption, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2015 My Sweet Lord, Gallery 1x1, Dubai, 2014 All You Need is Love, Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2013 When High and Low Art Meet: A Tribute to Ravi Varma, curated by Rupika Chawla, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi, 2013 Convergence: New Art from India and the Diaspora, William Benton Museum of Art, Connecticut, 2013 Tagore Lost and Found, Art Konsult, New Delhi, 2013 Intimately, H Gallery, Bangkok, 2012 pREpellers, Gallery Art & Soul, Chennai, 2012 Staging Selves: Power, Performativity and Portraiture, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2011 Fabular Bodies: New Narratives in the Art of the Miniature, curated by Gayatri Sinha, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, 2011 Darmstadt Tage der Fotografie Invitational Exhibition, Darmstadt, 2010 Lo Real Maravilloso (Marvelous Reality), New Delhi, 2009 The Monsoon Show, Gallery Nvya, New Delhi, 2009 The Calendar Art Project, Apparao Gallery, New Delhi, 2008

245

WA SWO X . WA SWO

Dr. Annapurna Garimella is an art historian and designer. Her research focuses on late medieval Indic architecture and the history and practices of vernacular visual and built cultures in India after Independence. Garimella is the Managing Trustee of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for-profit organisation, which maintains a research library dedicated to art, architecture, design and craft histories. The trust also conducts independent research projects, teaching, and advisement for college and university students and the general public. Dr. Garimella also heads Jackfruit Research and Design, an organisation with a specialised portfolio of design, research and curation. Jackfruit’s recent curatorial projects include Vernacular, in the Contemporary (Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi 2010–11), Mutable: Ceramic and Clay Art in India Since 1947 (Piramal Museum of Art, 2017) and Barefoot School of Craft in Goa (Serendipity Arts Festival, 2017–18). Dr. Garimella’s newest book is a co-edited Marg volume titled The Contemporary Hindu Temple: Fragments for a History (2019) and her upcoming edited volume is titled The Long Arc of South Asian Art: A Reader in Honor of Vidya Dehejia (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2021).

Her manuscript under preparation is titled Digesting the Past: The Discourse of Sacralized Architectural Renovation in Southern India (14th–17th Centuries).

Giles Tillotson has written extensively on Indian art, architecture, and history, especially on the Rajput courts of Rajasthan, and urbanism and landscape painting in colonial and modern India.

In recent years, he has worked on exhibitions and publications with the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in Jaipur City Palace, and with DAG, New Delhi. He is the co-editor (with Rob Dean) of Modern Indian Painting: Jane & Kito de Boer Collection (Mapin, 2019).

CONTEMPORARY ART

Karkhana A Studio in Rajasthan WASWO X . WASWO

248 pages, 203 colour illustrations & 4 b/w 10 x 11” (254 x 279 mm), hc ISBN: 978-93-85360-99-2 ₹2950 | $60 | £45 Fall 2021 | World rights

Front: A Visitor to the Court #6 (detail), 2021 Waswo X. Waswo, Rajesh Soni, R. Vijay and Dalpat Jingar; Gouache, gold and watercolour on digital paper; Private Collection Back: Dream of the Mango (homage to Rousseau) (detail), 2017 Waswo X. Waswo, R. Vijay and Dalpat Jingar; Gouache and gold on wasli; Private Collection

Karkhana takes us on a meandering journey through the Rajasthani city of Udaipur as we follow American artist Waswo X. Waswo, a twenty-year resident of India, through a typical day of collaborations with a variety of Indian artists. From miniature painters such as R. Vijay and Dalpat Jingar, to the third-generation photo hand-colourist Rajesh Soni, to the phenomenally skilled painter of golden borders, Shankar Kumawat, we are treated to an intimate look behind the scenes of Waswo’s extended network of co-creators, as well as the photography studio he uses in the outlying village of Varda. Waswo and his team weave visual narratives that blend vintage miniature painting techniques with digital photography, the past with the present, and a self-effacing humour with existential angst. Karkhana is a word that literally means “factory” in Hindi, but has lineage to the historical painting workshops of Persia. This book explores the continuance of this system of mutual artistic collaboration within a contemporized Indian community, and the manner in which Waswo’s unlikely team has come into the Contemporary Art market.