Conversation with KNMA Director and Chief Curator Roobina Karode

Recharting narratives of alternative modernisms from India and South Asia
By Ian Tee

KNMA Director and Chief Curator Roobina Karode. Image courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Roobina Karode is Director and Chief Curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) since its opening in 2010. Prior to this appointment, she was involved in teaching Indian and Western Art History at various institutions in Delhi from 1990 to 2006. Roobina has curated more than 50 major exhibitions, including key institutional shows by artists such as Nasreen Mohamedi, Jayashree Chakravarty, and Arpita Singh, among others. In 2019, she was curator for the India pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. 

I speak to Roobina on the occasion of her latest curatorial project ‘M.F. Husain: The Rooted Nomad’. Presented by KNMA, it is an immersive exhibition examining the life and work of the celebrated Indian artist. We begin this conversation by taking stock of her tenure at KNMA and unpacking key exhibitions that responded to the museum’s mandate.

Exhibition view of ‘Our Time for a Future Caring’, India Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, on view from 11 May to 24 November 2019. Image courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

You have been a part of KNMA since its establishment in 2010. Is there a specific milestone/ project/ initiative that is especially meaningful to you?

It has been an honour to work with Mrs Kiran Nadar and the collection of KNMA that has over the years developed into a substantial and seminal one. Our mandate has been to initiate multiple discourses that bear meaning and conceptually frame the modern and contemporary art practices of India and the South Asian region. The attempt has been to bring critical attention to what eminent historian Partha Mitter expresses as “a heterogeneous global modernism” through neglected histories, chapters, and archives. The blueprint that KNMA evolved in its initial years focused on the decades after India’s Independence. 

What still holds meaning for me is the first in the line of retrospective monographic exhibitions that brought sharp focus on a rather under-represented trajectory of Indian Abstraction in the post-Independence decades. One such figure is Nasreen Mohamedi, whose story remained unsung even though her work is admired. Her retrospective at KNMA ‘A view to infinity’ (2013) garnered overwhelming interest, and was picked up by Museo Reina Sofia’s director, Manuel Borja-Villel, and team of curators who visited the exhibition in Delhi. Organised in collaboration with Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the show travelled to Madrid in 2015 and then New York in 2016 as one of the inaugural shows at The MET Breuer.

‘Our Time for a Future Caring’ (2019) at the 2019 Venice Biennale was also a major milestone, as we had the opportunity to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary while reinstating the India Pavilion and India’s participation in the biennale after an absence for almost eight years.

For me and the team, each exhibition that we have curated was from a much-needed attention that a particular theme, an artist’s journey or his/her archives demanded and it was to present it to the larger public.

Ganesh Haloi, ‘Untitled’, 2016, gouache on board. Image courtesy and collection of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

The history of Indian abstraction is a key curatorial interest for you. Most recently, you curated an exhibition looking at six decades of painting by Ganesh Haloi. Titled ‘Re-citations: Rhymes about Land, Water and Sky’, the show is organised by KNMA in collaboration with the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata. What drives your interest and continued investment in Indian abstraction? 

I do not think the term abstract as used by Clement Greenberg holds meaning for us. S.H. Raza defied it by saying my works are not abstract but loaded with content. Ganesh Haloi enjoys the process of abstraction but does not comply with the term “abstract art”. Although his works from the last few decades are often hastily interpreted as abstract, what we see on the canvas or pictorial ground is a refined expression of his deep engagement with the cultural history of both Bengal and Nature. His place-conscious memories take on a life of their own in his poetics of line, colour and textures, in iterations of land, water and sky.

But it would be a limitation if we only stressed on my interest in Indian Abstraction. I have been equally, if not more, drawn to the history of figuration and enjoyed curating exhibitions that critically examined the artistic preoccupations of M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, Somnath Hore, Rameshwar Broota, Nalini Malani, Bhupen Khakhar, Arpita Singh, Sudhir Patwardhan, Gulammohammed Sheikh, and Atul Dodiya, to name a few.

Each artist is different and that has to be respected and taken as a curatorial lead into the project. Each creative journey has its unique trajectory, and one needs to study it accordingly. A collaborative vision is intrinsic to curatorial practice and some exhibitions create room for it.

“Each artist is different and that has to be respected and taken as a curatorial lead into the project. Each creative journey has its unique trajectory, and one needs to study it accordingly. A collaborative vision is intrinsic to curatorial practice and some exhibitions create room for it.”

As for the investment in abstraction, there is a proliferation of engagement and lure for abstraction amongst the audiences and practitioners. Art school courses are also introducing new discursive spaces. It then becomes exigent to develop new idioms and visual languages in spaces such as KNMA, not just curatorially, but also in terms of sustained engagement and interaction. A lot of our programming and outreach also incorporate the shifts in artistic practice as well as curatorial approaches.

‘MIRROR_ MAZE Echoes of song, space, spectre’, 2023, installation view featuring Sheba Chhachhi’s work, at KNMA Saket. Image courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Monographic/ survey exhibitions of senior artists are an important aspect of the exhibition programme at KNMA. With the expansive scope of art history, there are many facets of individual practices to highlight as well as unexplored figures who fell through the cracks of time. Are there particular themes/ narratives KNMA focuses on when deciding which artists to profile in these survey exhibitions? 

Monographic or comprehensive exhibitions are important to reflect upon the development of modern art practices in the subcontinent. We were the first to work on well-researched and curated retrospectives on artists such as Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, Rameshwar Broota, Arpita Singh whose extraordinary oeuvre needs to be contextualised. There are deliberate curatorial explorations on practices that re-chart narratives on alternative modernism/s. 

On the other hand, there have been special exhibitions looking at the meaningful contributions by Haku Shah, Jangarh Singh Shyam and Mahendra Raj, re-opening a dialogue and remodelling the content of exhibition making. Curatorially, it depends on the artistic practice and the objective of the exhibition. Every conceptual framework will see the methodology, focus, and practice shift.

M.F. Husain, ‘Karbala’, 1990, acrylic on canvas, 208 x 330cm. Image courtesy of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Rendering detail of ‘The Rooted Nomad’, an immersive exhibition created by Visioni Srl, Rome. Image courtesy of Visioni Srl, Rome.

Staying on this topic, KNMA is presenting ‘M.F. Husain: The Rooted Nomad’ at Magazzini del Sale in Dorsoduro in Venice from April to November 2024. The exhibition opens against the backdrop of the 2024 Venice Biennale ‘Foreigners Everywhere’. Can you talk about the title ‘The Rooted Nomad’ and your curatorial framework for the show?

M.F. Husain remains the iconic contemporary artist from India. His prolific oeuvre can be a curator’s delight, but also a daunting task with the sheer scope and scale of his practice, and the curatorial possibility of presenting him from different vantage points. There have been exhibitions that have showcased his work with his contemporaries and other founding members of Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), and many more. ‘The Rooted Nomad’ is conceived as a dual format exhibition, where the exhibition prompts viewers to engage with original paintings, drawings, objects, texts, poems, photographs, leading them rather unexpectedly into the immersive space.

It is an attempt to exemplify the experiences he gathered through a diverse constellation of works, evoking multiple journeys into time and place, that dwell upon the ideas of mobility, migration, moving across borders and locations. The exhibition intends to unpack expanded notions on the yatra or journey, both as a crux to civilisational ethos and artistic calling as well as a metaphor for transformation.

Indian cinema is a major theme in M.F. Husain’s work. In addition to his prolific career as a painter, he has also produced and directed several movies, including ‘Through the Eyes of a Painter’ (1967) and ‘Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities’ (2004). Can you talk about the significance of cinema in M.F. Husain’s oeuvre?

Husain was not only prolific, but restless with creative energy, experimental, multifaceted, and courageous to step outside his comfort zone. He spent years painting cinema hoardings in Bombay, often seen and photographed barefoot on a scaffold and in action. His love for cinema is apparent in so much of his work, from his paintings of scenes in Charulata or Pather Panchali, to his own filmmaking projects. ‘Through the Eyes of a Painter’ is an immense achievement by way of a formal aesthetic engagement with film as a medium as well as his intense travels into the interiors of Rajasthan and other urban and rural conglomerations. It disrupted traditional conventions of film and narrative, and won critical acclaim and awards. That spontaneity in breaking barriers and a fearless approach is elemental to understanding Husain.

M.F. Husain, ‘The Pull’, 1952, oil on board, 120 x 120cm. Image courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

M.F. Husain painting live for the first time at Sridharani Gallery, New Delhi, 1968. Gelatin silver print on paper, 16 x 20in. Photo by Richard Bartholomew. Image courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

To some, M.F. Husain was a controversial figure and the artist received threats of violence from religious extremists for his work. In many ways, the sociopolitical situation that he faced continues in contemporary India. Does the exhibition speak to the artist’s politics and/or the reception of his work at home?  

A highly visible public figure, Husain has been perceived as a people’s painter and many instances of his attempts to connect art to the masses attest to this reality. What we want to bring out through this exhibition is his indefatigable spirit of adventure, travel and absorption which were fuelled by his long-standing belief in the syncretic cultural, artistic and symbolic traditions of his beloved country.

What would be a key piece of advice to young art practitioners (artist, curator, cultural worker etc)?

The art world can be a daunting place at times, but it is equally enriching and intensely invigorating. Therefore, to any young art practitioner or cultural worker, the advice is to pursue something where their hearts and minds are fully involved. Being receptive with an open mind is necessary to learn and grow as there is much to explore in the ever-transforming domains of art and culture. One must learn to value creative possibilities, conversations and collaborations as human intelligence, emotions and sensibilities are the core of all art and cultural expression.

“The art world can be a daunting place at times, but it is equally enriching and intensely invigorating. Therefore, to any young art practitioner or cultural worker, the advice is to pursue something where their hearts and minds are fully involved.”

‘Pop South Asia Artistic Explorations in the Popular’, 2023, installation view featuring Lubna Chowdhary’s work, at KNMA Saket. Image courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Are there curatorial/ exhibition-making approaches you observe which excite you most today? 

One gets to see so much happening at the curatorial front nowadays, I would like to wager that it is one of the most exciting and inventive spheres in the art world encompassing myriad approaches and perspectives. What stimulates me with regards to exhibition making are two aspects. The first is  the thrill of working with new readings of histories of art and artists, inter-generational projects, and discovering under-represented talents. The second is the transformation of museum spaces with each project, since exhibitions are concerned with space-making, strategies of display and story-telling.

In this interview published on STIR World in 2020, you mentioned that “there is still the lack of an open-minded dialogue between government-led and private art institutions”. How do you think about the private museum as an “interface” for engaging with the state? What actions do you think can be taken to foster this dialogue among public and private art institutions? 

The private museum can prove to be a productive space in terms of forging a strong art engagement with the larger public. Sometimes institutions tend to become inward-looking and isolated from the existing eco-system. We are attempting to bridge this distance, emphasising and actionising collaborations with different public institutions and cultural forums. An instance is our collaboration with the state-run public bodies through programmes such as heritage walks, museum visits, and guided tours that take participants across the city to well-known as well as lesser known cultural locations.

Architectural model of KNMA's new stand-alone building. Image courtesy of KNMA.

Looking ahead, KNMA will be expanding into a new building designed by architect David Adjaye. Built on a 100,000 square-metre site in Delhi, it is set to become India’s largest art and culture centre when it opens in 2026. How would KNMA evolve as it moves into this new home? 

As we look towards the future, we are poised at an interesting moment in time. There is much anticipation as well as excitement. KNMA will evolve to take on bigger responsibilities, work on its strategies for enhancing diverse visitor’s engagement and meaningful programs. The new home will have, for the first time, “Collection Galleries”  dedicated to presenting the collection to the larger viewing public. With the museum and cultural centre as the two main limbs of KNMA, we are visualising new kinds of intersections, interactions, and inter-crossings to happen, across disciplines, formats, and the audience. We hope to contribute towards creating a vibrant culture of engagement with arts and creative fields in the country by making it more accessible to the public and generating awareness. How the new space will be perceived and received by the art public, only time will tell.

This interview has been edited.

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