BIOBIBLIOGRAPHY ........................... Bombay/ *1969 Poet, art theorist and independent curator. His publications include five books: three collections of poetry, ‘Zones of Assault’ (1991), ‘The Cartographer’s Apprentice’ (2000), and ‘The Sleepwalker’s Archive’ (2001); as well as ‘A Terrorist of the Spirit’ (1992), a translation of the Marathi poet Vasant Abaji Dahake’s ‘Yogabhrashtha’, and ‘Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer: The Painterly Evolution of Jehangir Sabavala’ (1998), a critical biography of the distinguished artist. Hoskote was visiting writer and fellow of the ‘International Writing Program’ at the University of Iowa/USA, Fall 1995. He received the Sanskriti Award for Literature, 1996. His poem ‘Portrait of a Lady’ won First Prize in the British Council/Poetry Society All-India Poetry Competition, 1997. He has written, lectured and published extensively on the visual arts, architecture and urban sociology. His special areas of interest are the relationship between sociology of religion, politics of ethnicity and the pressures of globalisation in a post-colonial environment, as well as between nationalist ideology and post-colonial art practices. As an independent curator, Hoskote has conceived and curated six exhibitions of contemporary Indian art: ‘Hinged by Light’, an exhibition of three major Indian abstractionists: Mehlli Gobhai, Prabhakar Kolte, Yogesh Rawal in Bombay, Jan. 1994; ‘Private Languages’, an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and assemblages by three emerging Indian artists: Anandajit Ray, Ravinder Reddy, Sudarshan Shetty, in Bombay, Jan. 1997; ‘Making An Entrance’, an exhibition of site-specific, public-art installations by Jehangir Jani, Bharati Kapadia, Kausik Mukhopadhyay, Baiju Parthan and Sudarshan Shetty, which was set up in the Kala Ghoda precinct, Bombay’s old colonial quarter, during the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, in Bombay, Febr. 2000; ‘Intersections: Seven Artistic Dialogues between Abstraction and Figuration’, an exhibition of art-works by Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Mehlli Gobhai, Bharati Kapadia, Yogesh Rawal, Baiju Parthan, C. Douglas and Jitish Kallat, in Bombay, Febr. 2000; ‘Family Resemblances: Nine Approaches to a Mutable Self’, an exhibition of art-works by Laxman Shreshtha, Sachin Karne, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Baiju Parthan, Amitava Das, Surendran Nair, Anju Dodiya and Gargi Raina, in Bombay, March 2000; 'The Bodied Self', an exhibition of works by Anju Dodiya, Jehangir Jani and Theodore Mesquita, premised on the treatment of the figure, in Bombay, April 2001. Most recently, at the invitation of the Japan Foundation Asia Center, Hoskote curated a solo exhibition of the Indian artist Atul Dodiya, titled ‘Labyrinth/ Laboratory', in Tokyo, June - July 2001. He is also co-curator of the exhibition project ‘Under Construction’ which will take place at various venues in Asia, to culminate in an exhibition at the Japan Foundation Forum, Tokyo, in 2002. |
