What happens when you tell a story backwards? Does the meaning change? Or does it merely change its order? There is something irresistible about mixed up sequencing, about non-linearity, and the creative energy that comes with it, about the retracing of steps to discover something new. 
This issue of Arts Illustrated we look at what it means to ‘reverse’ an idea, a process, an ideology, an expression in art – what are the questions that come up, the journeys we are compelled to take, the realities that suddenly become visible, and perceptions that reveal their layers. We look at artists who walk this path with consciousness even if the revelations that come up are unexpected, sparking a dialogue that is deeply individual, urgent and relevant to the times we live in.


There is so much to be said about the legacy one leaves behind – the tangible and the intangible – that we often overlook what one is currently holding in the palms of their hands. 

In the world of art, or any act of creation, ‘legacy’ takes on a whole other level, where the collective consciousness of the things created are bigger than the individual, impacting in ways that are less obvious in character and more influential in its characteristic. This issue, we look at artists who are finding ways to remember more and ‘save’ less, and also those who are finding ways to archive more and ‘delete’ less. We focus on artists who engage with how things are carried forward while being aware of the nature of things left behind that will shape the dialogues and nuances of the future.

It was artist Paul Klee who famously said ‘A line is a dot that went for a walk’. This issue, we are doing exactly that: we are going for a walk. We are going to try and follow the line and see where it takes us, and the place where it stops. 

This issue on ‘Lines’ we primarily look at two aspects of the line: one as a beginning and ending for an idea or thought to exist, and, two as that which gives us a sense of place from where dialogue can begin. We look at artistes who engage with the idea of lines less as a division or a polarity – that which we cannot cross – and more as a necessary nuance – that which we need to be able to cross. This walk isn’t about separation but about intersection, and the many frequencies of communication that exist within that place of meeting.

The games we played as children and the games we play as adults can hold a world of difference in their meanings – games can be tricky as they belong to both the young and the old, and within this divided belonging, we situate our next issue.

This issue on ‘Games’ we primarily look at what happens to an exchange of dialogue when a sense of play enters the picture, and what happens when that sense of play disappears, and more importantly, what happens in the moments in between these transitions. We also try to unravel the rapidly changing socio-political dynamics of the world around us through art that is not afraid of the floodlights or the booing-cheering crowds, and enters the arena to not win or lose, but simply to feel the rush of the wind, the rush of freedom, the rush of a good game.

The first thing that comes to our minds when we say ‘ghosts’ is the supernatural; it belongs to another realm, the unexplained realm, and remains a mystery, one that is constantly colliding with the world of science, the perennially explained realm. But, we think, there is more. 
This issue we look at what it means to be invisible, to be ghost-like, to be confined to a space behind the curtain and still exist. We look at artist(e)s who truly engage with the word and understand its connotations in real life – in how, often, our reactions to the unknown become the opportunity for morality, philosophy and science to intermingle; in how we carry the ghosts of our memories; in how we create the ghosts of society; and how, even through the use of language (words and the arts), the ghosts of silence remain.

This issue, we decided to go with the theme of ‘Tapestry’, where we look at the many different things that come together, in an unhurried manner, to make something that inspires and engages. We look at artist(e)s who stitch together disparate media to tell a story, even if it is of a single experience, thought or impression. And to then see what happens to the nature of dialogue itself when it finds itself in a wide, uncategorised expanse; and to the nature of how we define a community within, and through, the language of the arts.

After the rains, that unmistakable smell of wet earth – mann vasanai, as we say in Tamil – is like an old, weathered hand reaching out from the depths of the earth to meet us. In that gesture of reaching up, it carries with it a deep-rooted sense of knowing. We see that gesture in a young sapling or an ancient tree, and are reminded, time and again, that it is the soil beneath our feet that makes us stand tall.
And, so, our theme this issue is simply that – Soil – with all the images, metaphors and symbolism it carries: the politics of caste, identity and belonging; the artfulness (and earthworm-y quality) of constant restructuring and relevance; the power and influence of privilege and perceived dominance; and even those sensory filaments of memory and nostalgia unconsciously (and consciously) conditioned with dollops of prejudice.

The realms of imagination that surround us, give us unexpected glimpses of otherworldliness, often sandwiched between the moments of ordinariness. This world is delicious because it allows you free interpretation, but also tricky because once discovered it follows you around like a shadow. This issue of Arts Illustrated, we take on the big, squishy, shape-shifting word – Fantasy. We look at artists who have this capacity to not only clearly see and feel the pulsating throb of reality around them, but also the ability to look deeper, look beyond, to see and feel the steady thrum of magic. Not the magic of fairytales, but that of thought, dialogue and expression wrapped in a cloak of flamboyance. 

The earliest symbol for division is the rigid line with two dots on either side, never moving, never meeting, never crossing over. It is seared in our brains that the idea of division is sacrosanct – you pick a side and you stay there. Thankfully, the arts give us a fluid construct from which to view ‘division’, our theme for this issue. We look at artist(e)s who structurally or ideologically engage with this great divide – sometimes by intention, sometimes by circumstance, and sometimes by coincidence – giving us new ideas, perspectives and the possibility to change the stories we have heard and symbols we have grown up with. And, most importantly, to re-negotiate this intensely polarised world with its seeming allure of connectedness.

This issue we look at the theme of ‘Solo’ and the oasis of creative energy it holds. We look at artists who work with a single medium – traditional or digital – to express their ideas, without the dependence on any other extraneous means; to look at works that can speak in many different dialects using just one element, one subject, one thought, but with the ability to bend and fold the reality that surrounds it; and to look at the impact a single entity can create. It isn’t so much about the power of ‘one’ as a number as it is about the shape and texture of isolation and gifts that it brings.

Arts Illustrated turns five, and so, the theme for this anniversary issue is simply the number ‘5’. What are the different, quirky, literal, unpredictable, far-fetched, believable ways in which this number of balance can be interpreted? How far is it going to take us; and, more importantly, how delightfully fun is the process going to be?
In the past five years, we have looked at various themes and met artists who gave us surprising perspectives, but one common thread that bound them all together was that we kept the themes relevant to the reality of our times, and that’s how we defined the ‘contemporary’ in the art. With ‘5’, too, no matter how we choose to interpret it, it will continue to deeply question, engage and deliberate over the things that shape our world.

The pull of mythology is such that it wraps itself around us like an invisible shroud, defining us in rigid outlines filled with a shape-shifting mass of disappearing and reappearing ideas. Mythology isn’t just a floating island of stories irresistibly out of reach, but more like an iceberg – we see, react, debate, analyse and idealise the tip that stands out, forgetting most times of the unseen, immutable mass of history underneath. It’s within this paradox of static words and fluid meanings where mythology thrives, and that's what this issue of Arts Illustrated is hoping to unravel. 
We look at mythology’s relationship with art – the literal, the subtle, the obvious, the nuanced – and how ancient stories – the lived and the imagined – become potent tools with which to situate our contemporary world. We focus on artists who offer us not mythology’s supposed irrefutability but its apparent accessibility, easy charm, comforting appeal and its resonating familiarity that cuts across the real and the fantastical with the grace of a slow dance, and the power of disappearing and reappearing rhythm.

The words ‘design’ and ‘art’ are like siblings. They might share the same blood, but their personalities are entirely different. They can exist as two separate entities, and for most part they do, but there are those quietly explosive moments when they become mutually inclusive. This issue of Arts Illustrated we look at that space of intersection.
Within this issue we explore how the fundamental elements of design and art interact with each other, or how the structure of a piece of art changes based on how it is designed or how the design of a space changes because of its aesthetics.

This issue of Arts Illustrated is dedicated to what we call ‘Tactile Art’, to the materiality of art that works with old, new, found, discarded, recreated, recycled ‘senses’ to bring fresh, immersive narratives. We look at art that necessarily goes beyond the four walls of a canvas engaging all five (or some) of our senses in ways that are surprising and unexpected, but essentially tangible while letting go of traditional constructs of form and structure, narrative and meaning, seeing and the ways of seeing, and how individual patterns become part of our collective journeys.

With this issue we take on these upside down, topsy-turvy worlds of shifting, blurring
lines, of what it means to be ‘sane’ and ‘insane’, and where the two meet to create unexpected or dystopian realities. We look at art and artists who are constantly straddling the twin worlds, sometimes with dangerous abandon and sometimes with quiet power, but always with a sense of urgency, of alertness and of acute consciousness of the times we live in and the pathways they create.

On the cover, artist Avinash Veeraraghavan presents an intense and intimate context that for all intents and purposes shatters our perceived understanding sanity. ‘One of the fundamental metaphysical elements in my journey was the mirror. And one very critical sequence from a popular film structured everything that I was to go through eventually. This is the final fight sequence in the film Enter the Dragon between Bruce Lee and the antagonist. This game of cat and mouse inside a hall of mirrors succinctly sums up much of what I imagined I was living through. It was the perception of a powerful and scathing presence that constantly reflected my own ugly image back to me and broke one self-image after the other in the process. This is one of the most intense autobiographical references and one that has been on my mind for a very long time. For this cover, I found the perfect context in which to articulate this image. Rather than one print alone, which is how many of my pieces are reproduced, it is important to me that this is a cover and will therefore be reproduced in quantity, a metaphor for a hall of mirrors of its own’, he explained

This issue on ‘Humour & Art’ we look at artist(e)s who consciously use the code of laughter to interpret and repurpose the world around us and to give us a vocabulary that goes beyond the muted “Hahahas” “LOLs” “ROFLs” “LMAOs”. This issue, we look at the triggers that make us laugh, effortlessly slipping through the cracks of dogma, paranoia and dissent.

Four years ago, when we launched Arts Illustrated, we wanted to address the different aspects of contemporary art and how they shape the way we think and perceive reality. But, quietly and quite unconsciously, somewhere between the text and the visual, between the stories and the memories, between the creation and the consumption, we have become a magazine that now participates in an active dialogue with the many nuances that shape this very reality through the language of art. And so it felt fitting that we chose ‘Silence’ as our theme for this issue.
This issue we trace the rich landscape of silence and/in/of art – silence that can be loud or soft or fleeting or literal – in ways that surprise and enchant by doing exactly what goes against the nature of what it means to be silent, by bringing attention to it and, therefore, using it as an effective tool to wade through the clutter and chaos of a swiftly changing world.

London-based artist Tatiana de Stempel’s delightfully abstract interpretation of our theme ‘Beauty & Art’ for the cover reads like a visual prologue to a novel – the politics of colour, race, body and gaze become important narratives through which the many manifestations of beauty come to the fore. ‘Feminist writer Camille Paglai in her book Sexual Personae talks about the myth of beauty and how popular culture and literature exploits it. As much as the colour of our skin determines sexual attractiveness, I think hair, too, in many ways, expresses sexuality, racial identity and ethnicity,’ says the artist. Perhaps this cover then, front and back, is really the story of beauty itself – self-contained, sure, and suffused with charm.

For the cover this time, Russian artist collective AES+F give us a fragment of Inverso Mundus, a multi-channel video installation that is based on medieval engravings, re-interpreted by the collective where ‘the absurdist scenes from the medieval carnival appear as episodes of contemporary life’. And so, children are in a kickboxing match with the elderly and they grace our cover to induce equal parts spectacle and triumph for how we look at the ‘audience’ today – who came and saw and conquered  rst: the viewer or the maker?

Michelangelo Postoletto at Blenheim palace, Dialect and Dialogue - In the Bylanes of Hyderabad, Festival of Stories, India Art Fair, A Tempest of Recurrence, Differing Totem Poles of Delicate Dreams and Realities.

When we approached Brazilian artist Rigo to design our
cover this issue and told him the theme was ‘Time and
Art’, he said, ‘It is a challenge I would love to embrace
whole-heartedly’. And that sums up not just Rigo’s
dialogue with our theme but each and every story that
make up this issue, giving the idea of time a definite place
in the continuum of contemporary art, embracing wholeheartedly
the fact that it’s going to shift again. Because, as
Rigo says in this quirky, innovative double-spread cover,
‘Long Before Now, Future Was Always There’.

One of the things we take very seriously in India is our cinema. We are vehemently opinionated about what constitutes ‘good’ cinema and yet, fervently united when it comes  to Indian cinema outside our shores. Taking into account that we produce the world’s largest number of films (and that I will shortly be releasing my own Tamil film, Meow, 20 years after I produced Target, a film written by Satyajit Ray), it felt like the right time to dedicate an issue to Cinema and Art. Through this issue, we wanted to explore the inter-relationship between the filmmaker and the artist, sometimes within the same person, and deconstruct the character of a visual image on celluloid through the tangible avenues of lighting, production design, art direction, costume and make up. We have tried to understand the aesthetic of art through the language of cinema, and in the process, became conscious of not just the art we experience in cinema, but also of those who create that experience through cinema. Vincent Adaikalraj

Architect, artist and writer Gautam Bhatia brings the theme of our ‘Urban’ issue alive in seven different ways: Step 1: He draws. Step 2: He writes. Step 3: He constructs the urban myth. Step 4: He then deconstructs the urban myth. Step 5: He shows you how ideas can grow and die, even on paper. Step 6: He makes you smile, laugh out loud, and then makes you turn the page. Step 7: You now read the different facets of this continuum called ‘urban’.

For this issue on ‘Gender and sexuality’, celebrated writer Vikram Seth decided to use the language of colours, instead, to talk about what lies at the core of our theme. That the space of gender and sexuality is rich with perspective, any which way you look at it, conforming neither to the shape of your thoughts nor to the texture of your experiences.

Pierre Legrand recreates one of his deliciously colorful signature paintings for our cover, giving us a ‘peek’, literally, into the soul of the historic city of Delhi, the venue city for South Asia’s biggest art fair, India Art Fair 2016. The cover is exactly representative of what our exclusive issue for the Fair is all about – histories overlapping, contemporary thoughts interweaving, perspectives deconstructing and opinions highlighting the length and breadth of this contemporary arts landscape. Go on, take a peek.

This month our cover is all about 'breaking conventions' - be it in the form of an Augmented Reality
cover or in what the artist, Nikhil Chopra, signifies through his performance, as he says, 'I am interested
in new conversations about material, their narrative, their function and the memories they trigger. For
the performance, I used a chocolate cake as material to make a drawing with and smeared the wall of
my studio to create a mountainscape reminiscent of the Himalayas and my childhood in Kashmir. I
am also interested in identities and what they signify. Which is why I transformed myself from a suited
gentleman to a lady in a cocktail dress licking her fingers as she applies cake on the wall.'

Our cover this month features an artwork by Navin Thomas,
whose works primarily try to juxtapose or combine natural ecologies with electro-acoustic ecologies. The material used for
the artwork on this cover is from a 'box of junk' from his studio. 'The black egg belonged to a retired veterinarian who procured it from an abandoned emu hatchery on the outskirts of Bangalore,'
he says. For this issue on 'Sound in Art', Navin's artwork, quite unconsciously, signals a new era in contemporary art, where increasingly the lines between the inward and outward journeys begin to blur. 'Once there was a composer who arranged sound through a system of rocks and pebbles. I first dismissed it as an unconscious surface aesthetic. Years later, however, I began to consider the possible inherent audible nature of matter. Why represent a rock with another rock? Can a rock be more than a rock? Can a rock lead us to a certain formlessness...' Strangely, the black marker text on the box that he found reads, 'Not of this world'.

There is no denying the fact that the Mughals, a dynasty that prided itself in an identity of grandeur and magnificence, left their indelible footprints on India’s cultural landscape. Their amalgamation with India was so complete that, despite its history of conquest, we continue to own, hold and carry the myriad symbols of art and culture they left behind. It felt fitting, then, to dedicate this issue to the Mughal legacy and their far-reaching influences in contemporary art across the world – how they manifest, how they co-create and how they retain their inherent sense of mystery and charm. With the Mughals, as they show us even today, it is the resplendence of the glorious detail that makes the big picture.

This issue you will find the natural world take its rightful place in the realm of contemporary arts, giving the intangible a visibility that delights, and often surprises, us. Artists from around the world share their individual journeys with nature, and show us, literally and metaphorically, this indelible bond we share with the earth.

February - March 2020

December 2019 - January 2020

October - November 2019

August - September 2019

June - July 2019

April - May 2019

February - March 2019

December 2018 - January 2019

October - November 2018

August - September 2018

June - July 2018

April - May 2018

February - March 2018

December 2017-January 2018

October - November 2017

August - September 2017

Arts Illustrated is an Indian based arts and design magazine dedicated to understanding the contemporary arts landscape and creating a more inclusive ecosystem for the arts in the country. It delves deeply into the visual arts and design narrative, offering a global and contemporary perspective to subjects, information and ideas that we believe, need to be heard by a larger audience. Our endeavour is to create an exciting read that reflects our ethos to inspire, evoke and enrich our readers. Our visually laid out chronicle of the creative landscape is published bi-monthly (once in two months) and is available across 12 key cities in India.

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Arts Illustrated - August - September 2018

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