Secular Practice: Recent Art from India

Responding to the reality of living in a rapidly modernizing society, the work of the artists in this exhibition addresses issues ranging from freedom of expression and growing religious fundamentalism to sexuality, women’s rights, the inequities of entrenched class and caste systems, and the nature of memory and art itself.

This exhibition is part of Moving Ideas: Contemporary Cultural Dialogue with India. Organized by HooPoe Curatorial, Moving Ideas is a major interdisciplinary cultural project that examines recent developments in contemporary art and cultural discourse in India in the context of exchange and dialogue. The project provides the first in-depth examination in Canada of the strongly interdisciplinary cultural production that has emerged in India in the context of current debates on issues arising from conditions of life in the modern Indian state. Initiated with a focus on Canadian visual arts and small press publications at the 1999 Calcutta Bookfair, the presentation of Moving Ideas in Vancouver culminates the Canadian portion of the project.