Gigi Scaria: CITY UNCLAIMED
© Gigi Scaria
About:Gigi Scaria
Gigi Scaria was born in Kothanalloor, a village in southern Kerala, India, in 1973. In 1995, after completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, Scaria moved to New Delhi where he undertook a Master of Arts at Jamia Millia Islamia. In the mid-1990s, while establishing his career as a professional artist, Scaria also illustrated children’s books and taught art at an experimental school in New Delhi. By 2000, increased international exposure was accompanied by prestigious residency opportunities and solo exhibitions in India, Germany, America, Hungary, the Republic of Korea and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. In 2002, Scaria was awarded an Inlaks Scholarship, and was artist-in-residence at UNIDEE, Cittadellarte- Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, Italy. Scaria’s creative repertoire includes painting, photography, installation, sculpture, and video. Since 2002, he has made over thirty-five video works including: A day with Sohail and Maryan (2004), Home: in/out (2005), Raise your hands those who have touched him (2007), All about the other side (2008), and Raise your hands those who have spoken to him (2010). Subjects of early videos include the children who inhabit the streets of New Delhi, and the memories of people who have met or seen Mahatma Gandhi and Mao Zedong, while recent video work deals with the impact of the rapid growth of India’s cities and the social conditions that have been affected by this change.
Scaria’s first project for an American museum, Gigi Scaria: City unclaimed was held in 2013 at the Smart Museum of Art, the University of Chicago. A large photo-based mural of an imaginary cityscape, and a 3.6 meter high water fountain were sited in the museum’s reception for twelve months. Scaria’s recent solo exhibitions, Amusement park (Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, 2009), Difficult to imagine, easy to construct (Art Asia Miami, 2008), Site under construction (Videospace Budapest, 2008), and Triviality of everyday existence (the National Art Studio, Changdong, Republic of Korea, 2008), featured video art that included interviews (fictional and non-fictional), documentaries and animation.
In 2010 Scaria participated in West Heavens, the first major artistic engagement between India (historically referred to as the West Heavens in Chinese Buddhist texts) and China. The exhibition Place time play: India-China contemporary art, was displayed at various venues by the Shanghai International Culture Association, Institute of Visual Culture,China.
The following year Scaria was one of five artists (with Zarina Hashmi, Sonal Jain, Mriganka Madhukaillya and Praneet Soi) to represent India at the 54th Venice Biennale in the exhibition Everyone agrees: it’s about to explode, curated by Ranjit Hoskote. Scaria exhibited a major installation, Elevator from the sub-continent, which created a simulated space representing an actual elevator that the audience was invited to step inside in order to ‘time travel’ to different locations in India. In 2011 Scaria’s work was presented at the 3rd Singapore Biennale as well as in Crossroads: India escalate for the Prague Biennale.