Biografia
The Guild
Established in late 1997, The Guild opened in a small space in the city of Mumbai and over the years moved to different locations within the city, currently having expanded exhibition space in an old building with high ceilings, within the Mumbai Art District, having other contemporary art galleries nearby.
In 2006 The Guild opened a space in New York (closed in 2011) expanding programme to show works of artists from the Diaspora and other South Asian Regions.
The focus of the gallery has been to discover and promote young emerging artists, to provide a platform for discursive practices, innovative ideas and to promote the represented artists at international level, through various collaborations, art fairs, institutional shows, and Biennales and Museums exhibitions. Many of our represented artists have been shown at Biennales, Museums, educational institutes and other international galleries.
We continue to believe in using non-conventional ideas and semi institutional role in creating greater awareness regarding the process of creation. The Guild has been conducting an annual workshop, each time in a different mode, inviting artists, curators, art critics, writers, and performance artists, to set up studio in the gallery for the workshop period and have interactive sessions with audiences, other artist colleagues and art professionals. This has generated a lot of interest, also allowing the gallery team to spend considerable time with artists and art professionals, enriching the process of art making, stimulating intellectual debates, ideas, and creating a hotbed for discussions amongst the participants.
The Gallery has published 6 books and many catalogues, accompanying the shows, by distinguished art critics and writers. A recent publication being on Navjot Altaf’s project residency at New York, which resulted in an important anthropological document interviewing about 65 inhabitants of New York, regarding their life, migration and feelings about New York city.
Many of the artists represented by The Guild have participated in significant shows such as at Tate Modern, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Herning Kunstmuseum, Herning, Denmark, MAXXI National Museum, Rome, Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw, Newark Museum, Centre Pompidou, Frost Art Museum, Florida, The Fourth Moscow Biennale, Venice Biennale, Musee d’arte Contemporain de Lyon, France, Sydney Biennale, Australia. These artists have also been critically acclaimed in various art journals, magazines and newspapers.
Since 2010, the gallery has also been actively interested in introducing international artists to Indian audience and also at art fairs,some of them being, Charwei Tsai from Taiwan (solo), Shadi Ghadirian from Iran(solo), amongst the curated shows, Shirin Neshat, Barbad Golshiri, Farideh Lashai, Mitra Tabrizian, Johan Grimonprez, Renata Poljak, Raed Yasin, Munira Al Solh, Khaled Hafez, amongst others.
Some of the significant shows by the gallery in 2011 are Touch IV by Navjot Altaf, The Art Drawing: Curated by Sudhir Patwardhan , EXCRESCENCE, curated by Maya Kóvskaya, G.R.Iranna ( solo), Video and Animation Film Festival curated by Johny ML and regarding Iran Curated by : Shaheen Merali.
