Global Spotlight: India and Pakistan

This collection, curated by Diana Campbell and Suchi Reddy, highlights several of the names coming out of India and neighboring Pakistan that you can expect to find at international art exhibitions and fairs. All of these works come from well-respected Indian galleries that have joined Artspace, and which show at such major art fairs as Frieze, Art Basel, and Art Dubai.

This is a very special moment in the history of contemporary Indian art where we are beginning to see incredible talent from the sub-continent make its way onto the international stage. There has been an increased interest in Indian and Pakistani art abroad over the last few years (examples include the Serpentine Indian Highway exhibition, the Arken Museum India Now exhibition, the Pompidou Delhi Paris Bombay Exhibition, and an upcoming exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, to name a few). Following this wave, talented artists from the subcontinent are starting to be contextualized within international collections (like the Tate, Francois Pinault Collection, Guggenheim, and MoMA), not for their geography, but for the content of the work. Artists are making work of a scale and quality that is being shown in some of the world’s best museums.

We made this collection because we wanted to share this amazing part of Suchi's heritage that makes us so proud of the world. All of the artists we included make work that expresses their ideas and history in a language that is not traditional. These artists are thinking in new ways and making art in new materials, creating images with great integrity, reflecting the deep visual culture from the subcontinent.

1. What is your favorite piece in your collection? Why?

This is a very hard question, because we chose all the works, and we think all of the artists are worth having! But if we had to choose two, Rashid Rana's work and Manish Nai's sculptures would be hard to pass up. Both of these artists use small details of daily life in the subcontinent (such as closeups of skin or streets in Rashid Rana's case or worn clothing from family members in the case of Manish Nai) to create works of art that draw you into the mystery of the hidden stories that comprise the work.

2. Who are your favorite emerging and established artists?

This is again a difficult question since we work with so many artists that we admire. To name just a few, we'd say Hemali Bhuta, Manish Nai, and Srinivasa Prasad for emerging artists, and for established artists we would say Shilpa Gupta, Rina Banerjee, and Simryn Gill.

3.What are your favorite art spaces?

We share a love of sculpture parks which is one of the reasons we first started our dialogue about contemporary art , which eventually led to this collection. For museums, we love the Guggenheim Museum in New york, where Sandhini Poddar recently curated the show Being Singular Plural, showcasing contemporary Indian artists, and also the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark which beautifully integrates the outdoors and indoors in it architecture (its collection includes amazing Indian women artists like Shilpa Gupta and Dayanita Singh). Scandinavia has amazing art spaces, including the Wanas sculpture park, which now shows Indian artists such as Srinivasa Prasad. For galleries, we enjoyed the sculpture/installation space of the Pace Gallery, and the Gagosian's recent installation of the Avedon show designed by David Adjaye.

4. If you had any amount to spend on a work of art, what would you buy?

Diana's choice is Smoke knows by Pae White from 2009, and Suchi's choice is Ed Ruscha’s Standard Station with Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half from 1964.

5.What advice do you have for beginning collectors?

Don’t ever buy art as an investment—you should like the work regardless of how much it is worth later. Buy work by artists you like, and who you continue to like each time you encounter their work. Don’t just buy one piece; continue to collect works as the artist’s career develops and your collection will also be a display of those artists’ artistic journey. Buy on the primary market as well and buy from trusted and ethical galleries; it helps support artists to create new works and to develop their practice. Buy what speaks to you. Art has the power to inspire and sustain and provoke, and a collection should have all of those amazing qualities.