Priyanka Dasgupta

While much has been done towards saving the tiger, little had been done in the domain of art and how it could be employed towards doing its bit for the tiger. A recent visit to London and exposure to The Elephant Parade there, inspired the three of us, to see how we could aggregate some of India’s finest artists and inspire them to create The Tiger Trail here in India through an initiative called ARTIGER.
The response we got was overwhelming. Every gallery contacted, every artist requested, came forth and decided to pitch in pro bono. Which means 50 artists producing 50 life size fibre glass Royal Bengal Tigers. Each with the artists signature style.
Each of these tigers would be adopted by 50 of the leading corporates in the country. For a period of three months, they would be displayed in public spaces all over New Delhi, beginning December 2010. Post that they would belong to the corporate that adopted them. Every corporate will be given a tiger based on a lucky draw to prevent any artist biases to come into play.
Aparajita Jain, runs Seven Arts, a cutting-edge gallery that showcases the finest of global contemporary art. She lives in New Delhi with her husband and two children.
Nandita Baig, works in the Development sector. She is on the Founding board of Youthreach an NGO based in Delhi and also works with Umeed an NGO based in Punjab. She lives in New Delhi with her husband and two children.
Swapan Seth runs Equus Red Cell, an advertising firm. He lives in Gurgaon with his wife and two children.

Sakshi Gallery is celebrating its 25th year by presenting landmark exhibitions all over the country. This November it brings to New Delhi, an international exhibition of contemporary art called SCRATCH, curated by a notable collector Swapan Seth at the Lalit Kala Akademi. This is a special event since this is the first time that an exhibition of contemporary art of this nature is being presented by the private sector outside the paradigms of government aided organizations like the NGMA.

The gallery kicked off its celebrations with ROOTS, an exhibition in Chennai that featured some of the best works from the gallery collection, which represented the last two decades of art in India. The responses generated from the show were stupendous and resulted in the show travelling to Bangalore.

SCRATCH is an international exhibition that bears the essence of today’s global cultural phenomena by showcasing recent art from India and different parts of the world through a unique compilation that has been carefully chosen by Swapan Seth. Swapan’s penchant for collecting art and his specialized interest in new media and video art has been a defining factor for inviting him to curate this exhibition. Taking a cue from Ed Ruscha’s statement “If it makes you scratch your head, it is art”, Swapan conceptualized this show to encompass some of the most cutting-edge examples of contemporary art today. Centered around the immediate history of the decade that we’ve just lived through, SCRATCH is mainly comprised of a new generation of New Media artists from India, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, USA, Nigeria and Cuba, making it a truly international exhibition of contemporary art in the heart of New Delhi. Artists in this exhibition include Priti Kahar, Kartik Sood, Siddhartha Kararwal, Mithu Sen, Hemali Bhuta, Neha Choksi, Rohini Devasher, Sarnath Banerjee, Anindita Dutta, Isa Ho, Jompet, Navin Rawanchaikul, N. S. Harsha, Rashmi Kaleka, Saffa Erruas, Sunil Gawde, Ucche Iroha, Chang Keng Hau, Chang Geng Hwa, Chen Shun Shu, Jorge Mayet, Nenna Okore, Noriko Yamaguchi, Wang Fujui, Wu Chi-Tsung, Asim Waqf, Sarvanan, Akshay Rathore, Vijai Patchineelam, Priyanka Dasgupta and Suchitra Gahlot.