Through perspectives on alternate art history, universalism, black consciousness, Cheikh Anta Diop & Ambedkar.
Through perspectives on alternate art history, universalism, black consciousness, Cheikh Anta Diop & Ambedkar.
About Strangers House Gallery
Strangers House is a Gallery of Contemporary Art initiated through perspectives on alternate art history, universalism, black consciousness , Cheikh Anta Diop & Ambedkar. Based in Bombay with deep connections to Africa, Latin America & India. We seek Universalism in Art as a precursor to a visual imaginary that encompasses aesthetic philosophies that could be drawn between Africa, Latin America and India, that are read from the writings of Dr B R Ambedkar & Cheikh Anta Diop, founded on humanity emerging from secularism and black consciousness. We practice a material reality of production through artisanship & simplicity - wood, bronze, terracotta, print, ceramic and paint that define us as artists.
Inviting Strangers as Guests, it is a house that enters a long existing dialogue that Bombay makes us inhabit in its architecture, people, spontaneity and function.
The Strangers Guest House, located at Clark House between 1940-62, was very much a home for long term guests, executives from abroad working in the city as well as sailors. It was run by a man from Baghdad--of Jewish background—and a woman from Eastern Europe also with Jewish background. The Czechoslovak consulate used to be at the other end of Wodehouse Road (now Nathalal Parekh Marg).
Ram Bahadur Thakur & Co, established and run by the Sharma brothers, moved into Clark House in 1955, initially renting a small office in the premises from the Strangers Guest House. From there, the Sharmas operated their international shipping company that had trade links to countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Japan. Their trade connection to Czechoslovakia were especially accompanied by cultural activities for which Clark House was well suited. Many cultural events were carried out for the Sharma brothers’ Czechoslovak contacts such as Lidice Memorial Day to commemorate the tragic fate of the Czechoslovak village. The eradication of the village of Lidice on June 10, 1942, by the Nazis, the mass killings of all its men, the deportation of its women to concentration camps, and the tragic fate of its children was an appalling act of brutality, despotism and injustice to which many around the world reacted immediately. In Bombay, Lidice Memorial Day became an annual event through which an appeal to artists around the world to donate works for an art collection for a gallery and a museum that was to be built in Lidice, was circulated (Wille 2020). This is how, Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar (K.K. Hebbar; 1911-1996) and Chintamoni Kar (1915-2005) donated works to the Lidice Collection (Wille 2020).
BEHIND STRANGERS HOUSE
Artistic Director
Sumesh Sharma is a Bombay based curator focusing on alternate art histories, socioeconomics, and cultural politics. His work engages with immigrant cultures, vernacular modernism, and Black consciousness. He curated Dak’Art 2016 and presently works on an extensive research project on aesthetics and its new philosophical bearings that emerge from India & Africa. In January 2023 he curated ' Mind's Cupboards ' a retrospective of the artist Lalitha Lajmi at the National Gallery of Modern Art , Mumbai, Something Else, Cairo, November 2023 and a trans-generational collaborative public art project in Paris on the contexts of immigration and against the continuous racialization of social dialogue by the right wing. He co-founded the Clark House Initiative in 2010 with Zasha Colah.
He was invited as the curator to the Biennale de Dakar , Dak'Art 2016 & 2018 , Survival Kit , Riga , Latvia in 2018, and Checkpoint Helsinki in 2015. He has curated exhibitions at the Showroom , London , Centre Pompidou , Paris, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Metropolitan Museum , New York, Kadist Art Foundation , Paris, Para Site, Hong Kong , Villa Vassilieff , Paris , Raw Material Company, Dakar , Recontres de Bamako , Mali, Stedelijk Museum Bureau , Amsterdam , ISCP New York, Insert 2014, New Delhi, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai , Project 88 , Mumbai and Aicon, New York.
He has been a resident at the Latvian Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Manifesta Online Residency, San Art , Vietnam, Cites des Arts , Paris, Art Sonje Center , Seoul , Asia Cultural Center , Gwangju , Gwangju Biennale Curators Course, Korea , Sao Paolo Biennale , Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara , Kadist Art Foundation , ISCP New York , Ekalokam Trust for Photography , Tiruvannamalai , Iaspis Stockholm , Sweden , College House , Colombo and was the Independent Curators International fellow for Senegal in 2014 where he researched how the funding mechanisms in culture and institutional support of art institutions utilise the power structures put in place by colonial laws. His artist practice seeks layers through political materiality and art historical & theoretical failures while discussing the visual as conversations between the views of Cheikh Anta Diop and Dr. BR Ambedkar
He has been a resident at the Latvian Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Manifesta Online Residency, San Art , Vietnam, Cites des Arts , Paris, Art Sonje Center , Seoul , Asia Cultural Center , Gwangju , Gwangju Biennale Curators Course, Korea , Sao Paolo Biennale , Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara , Kadist Art Foundation , ISCP New York , Ekalokam Trust for Photography , Tiruvannamalai , Iaspis Stockholm , Sweden , College House , Colombo and was the Independent Curators International fellow for Senegal in 2014 where he researched how the funding mechanisms in culture and institutional support of art institutions utilise the power structures put in place by colonial laws. His artist practice seeks layers through political materiality and art historical & theoretical failures while discussing the visual. He was a part of a pedagogical workshop project at the printmaking and sculpture studios of the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai and has worked with the artist Krishna Reddy for more than a decade curating his retrospective and building his archive and estate. .
His Masters in Research at the Universite Paul Cezanne (2008) Aix -Marseille III was an Inquiry into Artist Careers and Conceptual Practice. He studied for a degree in Economics and Political Science from the St Xavier's College , Bombay ( 2005) and a Post graduate diploma in Human Rights from the Mumbai University in 2006. He also has a post-graduate diploma in Capital Markets from the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai (2006) and a MBA in Change & Technology (2009) from Institut d'administration Des Entreprises , Aix en Provence, France.
Visit the gallery
Stranger’s House, Strangers House , c/o RBT & Co , Ground floor, Clark House , 8 Nathalal Parekh Marg, old, Wodehouse Rd, opp. Sahakari Bhandar, Colaba, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400039
Hours
Open today | 11:00 am – 07:00 pm |
Copyright © 2024 Strangers House Gallery - All Rights Reserved.
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