LOOKING AFTER LIBERALISATION: ETHNOGRAPHY, CONCEPTUAL DRIFT, AND THE PROBLEM OF VISUAL MAKING IN INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v14.i2SCE.2026.6769Keywords:
Indian Contemporary Art, Liberalisation, Ethnography, Visuality, Pedagogy, Conceptual ArtAbstract [English]
Since India’s economic liberalisation in 1991, contemporary art practices have increasingly adopted research-based and ethnographic methodologies to address social inequality, political violence, and historical erasure. While these approaches initially expanded the critical scope of Indian art, this article argues that their institutional consolidation has often privileged conceptual legibility over visual and sensory inquiry. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Henri Bergson, Jacques Rancière, Fredric Jameson, and Ann Cvetkovich, the paper examines how conceptual drift has reshaped artistic form, spectatorship, and pedagogy in post-1991 Indian art. Through case studies of Shilpa Gupta, Riyas Komu, Gigi Scaria, Raqs Media Collective, and CAMP, it demonstrates how images increasingly function as illustrations of argument rather than as open-ended perceptual fields. Rather than rejecting ethnographic or conceptual practices, the article calls for a recalibration that reintegrates affect, duration, and visual thinking into contemporary artistic practice and art education.
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