Venue: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket
Date: 2 July 2016

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) organises these talks and we were invited to a recent event – The Coup. Artist Srestha Rit Premnath was the speaker and the evening was moderated by Akansha Rastogi.

Coup as per the dictionary is “a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government”. From what we understand during the KNMA talk, they look at coup as overthrowing an idea or an art regimen and filling the vacuum with a new thought or fresh credo.

The talk started with the words Negation, Redaction, Erasure and Possibility written on a white board. The coup was developed in context of these words. To establish the idea Premnath showed a slide show presentation that comprised photographs of his works and some random clicks. There was also a video “Sleeping Dogs” that showed clippings of dogs sleeping oblivious to their busy surroundings as if they were just inanimate elements in a scene.  Premnath is also a founder of the art publication “Shifter” and a copy of that was circulated for the audience’s perusal.

A large part of the audience who shared their views and experiences were also from the field of arts. Hence most of the art talk was in a lingo perhaps common to the trade and went way above our heads. Nonetheless many concepts, such as protests through art, stifling of protests and its impact, versatility of a medium came up that we as amateurs could relate to. Whether we followed every bit of it or not, or if our interpretations of the discussion are correct are inconsequential to the whole experience. What mattered was we loved every bit of the discussion and the cups of tea and sandwiches that followed thereafter.

KNMA is organising another curated art event at their Noida centre this Saturday (16 July) and we are definitely going to attend.