HAMBURG.- The aesthetic practice of the Indian artist Tejal Shah (*1979, Bhilai) encompasses video, photography, performances, drawings, sound works, and spatial installations. Her works compellingly engage us in layered propositions on the co-dependent relationships between gender, ecology, science, sexuality, and consciousness. Informed by queer, feminist, and Buddhist thought, Shah questions systematic dualistic differentiations and seamlessly integrates important reflections on violence and power on the one hand, and love and regeneration on the other. Particularly in the context of her native country India, her unique artistic position is a testimony of courage, outstanding in quality and independence.
At the
Kunsthaus Hamburg, Shah presents her 5-channel video installation Between the Waves as an extensive spatial experience. In the installation, which premiered at dOCUMENTA (13), the artist develops her own vision of a cosmology that breaks with all standard conceptions of corporeality and consciousness, dissolving the boundaries between human, nature, culture, and other species. The humanimal protagonists that appear in the films unselfconsciously embody ritualistic and intuitive explorations, unapologetically seeking closeness. The artist presents a radical imagination that is both a utopia and a dystopia. It can be asked if this deeply impressive as well as disturbing vision of a humankind haunted by waves of love over and over will change anything in this world as it is. Beyond the video installation, the Kunsthaus Hamburg is showing collages that are thematically linked to the films and is premiering unbecoming, her new installation of drawings, which pivots on the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the figure of the Bodhisattva.
In collaboration with the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, HFBK (Prof. Michaela Melián), Tejal Shah outlined the specific cultural context in which her works are created by presenting two film programmes. She has invited the Indian film-maker and singer Shabnam Virmani as a special guest, whose films she presented and discussed. The works of both artists contain multiple thematic and conceptual links and they jointly conducted a day-long workshop with the students at HFBK.
Shah will furthermore elucidated her current research in a performance lecture also presented at the HFBK. For over two years, she has been focusing on key aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, which follows the Middle Way Philosophy School, a legacy of the erstwhile Nalanda University. She is thus drawing upon a living spiritual tradition that offers some of the most profound and scientifically compatible perspectives on the nature of reality and consciousness. Her main interest is in the practical application of the core insights proposed by this body of knowledge and its relevance to the total process of living in consonance.
Tejal Shah (*1979, Bhilai, India) studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, and at the Art Institute of Chicago in the United States. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, and her films have been presented at various film festivals; among other venues, she has shown her works at the Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2016/17), the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014), the Gujral Foundation, New Delhi (2014), dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), the Centre Pompidou (2011), and the Tate Modern (2006). In Germany, she is represented by Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich, and in India by Project 88, Mumbai.