Forum Art Gallery is one of the key venues for Chennai Photo Biennale 2021. The collaboration that instituted the Forum Residency in the previous edition is host to set of critical artworks from the curatorial thematic MAPS OF DISQUIET.

Artists featured

Andreas Langfeld & Sarabhi  Ravichandran, Hito Steyerl , Senthil Kumaran, and Siva Sai Jeevanantham .

Curated by Arko Datto, Bhooma Padmanabhan, Boaz Levin, Kerstin Mieincke.

CURATORIAL NOTE

Titled Maps of Disquiet, the Biennale will reflect on the exigencies of our times: resisting majoritarian impositions,ecological collapse, and technological dystopias by reclaiming pluralities of thought, voices, and art, and building new networks of solidarity and care.

The site of the ‘Great Trigonometrical Survey’ of 1802, the first colonial attempt to measure and map the subcontinent, Chennai today is an arena of contested visions of a common future that resonates beyond. Anchoring itself in Chennai, the Biennale will delve into the invisible realms of power and knowledge that shape our global present  while simultaneously proposing the creation of resistant cartographies.

It asks, Who resources? Whose rivers? Whose interests? Whose voices? Whose images?

The biennale brings together artists and practices that explore the representations of labour, urban imaginaries, the commons, economic and migratory flows, archaeology and mining, and what anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, describing growing hostility towards minorities across the world, refers to as a ‘fear of small numbers’.