Raqs Media Collective
24 Feb - 12 Apr 2012
RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE: GUESSWORK
24 February – 12 April, 2012
Raqs Media Collective returns to Frith Street Gallery with an exhibition featuring new and recent work which includes play with words, light and electricity, sign language, chiastic variations, archival traces, counting exercises and insurgent readings of time. They represent the way in which Raqs is thinking at present about counting, gestures, signals and the presence of the ineffable in our lives.
The works featured in Guesswork invite the viewer to consider what it means to measure infinity and to seize time rather than to be captive to the passing moment. By working with pixels and proverbs, circuits and syntax, Raqs turn thoughts into images and images into questions. The works ask us – how might one read, or unread, the relation between singularity and the multitude? What does one say when one is at a loss for words? How does one harness the energy of questioning what we take for granted? Guesswork, being guess-work, provides conjectures rather than answers in response to these questions.
Raqs Media Collective has been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work, which has been exhibited widely in major international spaces, locates them in the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory – often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. They live and work in Delhi, based at Sarai-CSDS, an initiative they co-founded in 2000. They are members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series.
Raqs Media Collective are: Jeebesh Bagchi, b. 1965, New Delhi, India; Monica Narula, b. 1969, New Delhi, India; Shuddhabrata Sengupta, b. 1968, New Delhi, India. Recent exhibitions include, 2010: Surjection, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; The Things That Happen When Falling In Love, a solo exhibition at Baltic Centre, Gateshead; The Capital of Accumulation, a solo exhibition at Project 88, Mumbai; The New Décor, a touring group exhibition at Hayward Gallery, London and The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow. 2009: The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet, a solo exhibition at Art Now Lightbox, Tate Britain, London and When The Scales Fall From Your Eyes, a solo exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham. Future solo exhibitions include, 2012: The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
24 February – 12 April, 2012
Raqs Media Collective returns to Frith Street Gallery with an exhibition featuring new and recent work which includes play with words, light and electricity, sign language, chiastic variations, archival traces, counting exercises and insurgent readings of time. They represent the way in which Raqs is thinking at present about counting, gestures, signals and the presence of the ineffable in our lives.
The works featured in Guesswork invite the viewer to consider what it means to measure infinity and to seize time rather than to be captive to the passing moment. By working with pixels and proverbs, circuits and syntax, Raqs turn thoughts into images and images into questions. The works ask us – how might one read, or unread, the relation between singularity and the multitude? What does one say when one is at a loss for words? How does one harness the energy of questioning what we take for granted? Guesswork, being guess-work, provides conjectures rather than answers in response to these questions.
Raqs Media Collective has been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work, which has been exhibited widely in major international spaces, locates them in the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory – often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. They live and work in Delhi, based at Sarai-CSDS, an initiative they co-founded in 2000. They are members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series.
Raqs Media Collective are: Jeebesh Bagchi, b. 1965, New Delhi, India; Monica Narula, b. 1969, New Delhi, India; Shuddhabrata Sengupta, b. 1968, New Delhi, India. Recent exhibitions include, 2010: Surjection, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; The Things That Happen When Falling In Love, a solo exhibition at Baltic Centre, Gateshead; The Capital of Accumulation, a solo exhibition at Project 88, Mumbai; The New Décor, a touring group exhibition at Hayward Gallery, London and The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow. 2009: The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet, a solo exhibition at Art Now Lightbox, Tate Britain, London and When The Scales Fall From Your Eyes, a solo exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham. Future solo exhibitions include, 2012: The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.