Shaurya Kumar

Contemporary Art in India has evolved rapidly over the past 30 years but artists have never lost sight of the nation¿s complex and layered regional history. While the urban centers of Delhi and Mumbai house international galleries, museums and art fairs, there are local communities that have created alternative hubs for art making. This class will explore the contemporary art worlds of India, starting in Mumbai, the site of India¿s first modernist movement, the Bombay Progressives, and visit world class galleries and museums in the former colonial district of Colaba. We will then tour the 8th-12th century cave temples of Elephanta, and even older caves of Ellora and Ajanta, which inspired post-independence artists to look back at their local sculptural traditions. We will then visit the former Portuguese colony of Goa where the critically acclaimed performance artist Nikhil Chopra (b. 1974) runs an art space, residency and performance collective, HH Arts Foundation. The trip will culminate in Varanasi, the spiritual heart of India, where students will be given the opportunity to occupy a studio space at the Kriti art residency and spend several days making art with local materials. At each site, students will participate in hands-on workshops, walking tours, studio visits, scholarly lectures and meet people engaged in making contemporary art outside of white cube spaces. Special emphasis will be given on artists who work on issues of individual and collective identities, and work on art and ecology, sustainability, and historically marginalized voices and narratives. The idea of a portable studio will be the way that each participant engages the trip on a daily basis in journaling, documentation, research, drawing, or collage. Mapping the experience of our travel and articulating a point of view through personal recording in a chosen medium will come together in a gallery exhibition/presentation in Varanasi where students will be artist-in-residence in an internationally known residency and art center.

A course, for students working at all levels of printmaking or painting, that introduces a variety of monotyping techniques. Some of the media used in the course are oil based, such as oil pigments and oil-based inks; and some are water based, such as opaque and transparent watercolors, water soluble inks, and tempera paints. Registration and overprinting methods are shown, along with stencil and transferring processes. Instruction consists of demonstrations and private and group critiques.

Interdisciplinary studio seminar course designed to support the production of creative work by first and second year MFA graduate students. Graduate level discourse will be fostered in relation to contemporary issues in visual art and the history of ideas with an emphasis on aesthetics. Course programming will include: select readings/discussions, invited guests, student presentations and critique of creative work.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.