Anant Joshi
-
Hour glass, Glass hour, 2022
-
Cat-O-Clock (when the caterpillar gets its wings), 2021
-
Up Up Up, Down Down Down, 2021
-
Flower Clock, Curdling Milk, Porcupine and Pangolin, 2020
-
Untitled, 2019
-
Masquerade and Other Apologues, display view, 2015
-
Trembling Hands (of the clock), 2015
-
Masquerade and other Apologue, 2014
-
Happy New Year, 2013
-
Untitled, 2012
-
Untitled, 2012
-
Untitled, 2009
-
May look closer than they appear, 2008
-
Navel one and the many, 2007
-
Chocolate box, 2005
b. 1969, in Nagpur, India
Anant Joshi is a Mumbai based artist who creates sculptures and paintings out of fragments of toys (both found and created). These works, particularly the sculptures and installations, discuss larger sociological issues found not only in India but also around the world. One of the many ironies of Joshi’s work is that he never had toys growing up – he only discovered them as an adult and with that lens, he saw the messages about power, perception and reality that seemingly trivial toys were sending as cultural programming to the next generation. Toys allow children to create theatrical examples of how they think the world should be, and this can create ugly realities later.
Joshi first discovered toys as a medium when attending a residency program at the Rijksakademie in the Netherlands. On the Queen’s birthday, Dutch children sell their old toys for pocket change. Joshi purchased these toys and took them apart to remove their “fixed identities” and adapt them to a new cultural context (mirroring his own process of cultural adjustment as an Indian in Holland). While his early works used readymade toys, Joshi now creates his own “toys” – usually painted ceramic and fiberglass. Like the toys they are inspired by, Joshi’s sculptures and installations gleam with shiny colors and finishes, luring in the viewer. When the viewer looks closely, however, they find grotesque details like severed heads and trunk-less limbs that evoke a sense of violent chaos.
In his 2007 show at Chemould Prescott Road, “Navel One and the Many” (the title comes from the god Brahma coming into the world from a lotus growing out of the god Vishnu’s navel), Joshi transformed toys into violent installations, reminding the viewer that while they may feel removed from violence happening in the world around them, they actually play an active role in it by how they teach their children. Just as the god Vishnu held all the elements of creation within his body, Joshi's work suggests that we also hold the elements of creating our own societies through the way we raise our children.
Joshi is also known for his dramatic kinetic room installations that exaggerate the effects of his mutated toy sculptures using lights, shadows, and reflections. In another installation from the 2007 exhibition “Navel One and the Many”, the artist skewered fragments of brightly painted animal, human, and superhero figures on rotating steel rods, piercing the viewer’s childhood memories and sense of societal order. Joshi amplified the horror of this scene by separating the viewer from the toys through blinds made of sharp razor blades, seducing the viewer into the scene with movement and lights, but rendering them powerless to do anything besides standing and watching the destruction within.
Joshi created one of the most celebrated works in the 2012 traveling exhibition ‘Cinema City’ co-curated by Archana Hande and Madhushree Dutta. Inspired by matinee idols, often referred to as ‘patakas’ (firecrackers), as well as spindles, which are integral to the history of the textile industry, the “erstwhile nerve centre of the city” according to the curators, Joshi created a stunning and spinning installation with 100 objects rotating on an 8 x 4 foot table. The installation evoked a sense of desire and excitement that pulses at the heart of Bombay.
The ability to harness a city’s energy is one of Joshi’s strengths. For the Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2012, Joshi created an ambitious installation entitled “Three Simple Steps” where he replicated the form of a traditional Kerala temple, and adorned the wall with hundreds of electronic mosquito repellant devices in place of lamps. Instead of mosquito repellant, the artist filled the devices with a perfume called ittar, creating an overpowering experience meant to act as a mechanism to invite in likeminded good people, such as the Malayalis who left their homeland to seek fortune abroad, and to simultaneously repel malevolent people who do not have their homeland’s best interests at heart. Like many of Joshi’s works, “Three Simple Steps", takes deep inspiration from Hindu mythology and Indian festival culture such as the Kerala festival of Onam.
The artist lives and works in Baroda, India.
-
CheMoulding: Framing Future Archives
60 Years of Gallery Chemould | Group Show 15 Sep - 24 Oct 2023On the occasion of Chemould in Bombay turning 60 years old, we invite you to immerse in our intergenerational celebration. Chemould Frames was started by Kekoo Gandhy at the heels...Read more -
Interference
Anant Joshi | In-Touch Edition VII 1 Feb - 30 Apr 2022Anant Joshi invents a circus of the past: forms that populate his work act out stories of political upheaval and social turmoil in the country. He plunges us into this...Read more -
Out-site / Insight
Group Show | In touch Edition I 24 Apr - 23 Jul 2020We approached our artists inquiring how they were doing in this time of isolation. Several of them are unable to make art - using their time to read, watch films,...Read more -
Modus Operandi
Group Show 13 Jul - 18 Aug 2018This July, Chemould Prescott Road presents Modus Operandi, a show that has been devised by Shireen Gandhy and the Chemould team, brin ging together a large number of Chemould artists...Read more -
Masquerade and Other Apologues
Anant Joshi 15 Jan - 14 Feb 2015A weathervane that hangs blow-torched plastic toys that enact the divisions of the headlines of a broadsheet, surely critiques an aesthetic. Anant Joshi is an artist who keenly archives the...Read more -
Aesthetic Bind: Cabinet Closet Wunderkammer
50 Years of Chemould | Group Show 20 Jan - 3 Mar 2014There are small exhibitions within this exhibition compacted by a set of framing devices. The Closet holds intimate things: clothes, mementos, secrets about self and identity, fears or even crimes....Read more -
Navel: One and Many
Anant Joshi 13 Mar - 14 Apr 2007Anant Joshi has often arrived at his drawings and paintings from forms and spaces that he sculpts or constructs. He uses carefully selected toys that he breaks apart, paints over...Read more
-
India Art Fair 2023
New Delhi 9 - 12 Feb 2023Booth B2 Public days: Feb 9 - 12, 2023 We look forward to welcoming you once again in person to our booth at India Art...Read more -
India Art Fair 2020
New Delhi 30 Jan - 2 Feb 2020Public days: Jan 30 - Feb 2, 2020 Chemould Prescott Road presents a suite of works this year at India Art Fair 2020 that reflect...Read more -
India Art Fair 2019
New Delhi 31 Jan - 3 Feb 2019Public days: Jan 31 - Feb 3, 2019 Chemould Prescott Road presents a suite of works this year at India Art Fair 2019 that reflect...Read more -
DIFC Gulf Art Fair 2007
Dubai, UAE 7 - 10 Mar 2007Public days: March 7 - 10, 2007 Chemould Prescott Road is delighted to present the works of seven artists, Tushar Joag, Anant Joshi, Jitish Kallat,...Read more