T. Venkanna
Born 1980, Gajwel, India. Lives and works in Baroda, India
Education
2006 M.F.A. (Printmaking) Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda, India
2004 B.F.A. (Painting) (Gold Medal) J.N.T.U, Hyderabad, India
Solo Exhibitions/Projects
2025
Black Blue Yellow, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2024
Venkanna Drawings 2014-2024: Part I, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
Asia Now, Paris, France, Modesti Perdriolle Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
2023
Reworkings, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
Looking for Peace, Modesti Perdriolle Gallery, Belgium
LOVE ME AS I AM, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2022
AS I AM, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2019
LOVE ME, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
Tradition/Transformation, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2017
Looking for Peace, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India
2015
CELEBRATION, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2013
Art Brussels 31, Contemporary Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium
Pancha Mahabhuta, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai
2012
Art Brussels 30th Contemporary Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium
Pancha Mahabhuta, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India
2011
Printmaking: Open Studio, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
Art Brussels 29th Contemporary Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium
Here I am yours, I am yours, be mine, ArtStage Singapore, Singapore
2010
NERO, Gallery Luce, Turin, Italy
Sacred and Profane, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2009
For Identity, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
Group Exhibitions
2024
Politically Charged, Aicon, New York, USA
Inked Legacies Linked Geographies, Srishti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, India
Siren’s Lullaby in a Forgotten Realm, Gallery Dotwalk, Gurgaon, India
Miracle of Absence, Art Exposure, Kolkata, India
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
2023
Vichitra Desh: Queer Nation, New Delhi
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
2022
Inside India, Espace 251 Nord, Liege, Belgium
Radical Enchantments, Aicon Gallery, NY
Inside India, Modesti Perdriolle Gallery, Belgium
2021
The Art of India, Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum, Iowa, USA
2018
Inde, Manoir de Martigny, Switzerland
2016
TIME, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
2014
Residual Remnants, Site art space, Baroda, India
Trajectories: 19th – 21st Century Printmaking from India and Pakistan, Sharjah Art Museum, UAE
Midnight's Grandchildren, Kitab Mahal, Mumbai
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
2013
Air Sri Lanka, Galerie Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria
Lunch with Olympia, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, USA
Between the Lines: Identity, Place, and Power, National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai, India
Skoda Prize Show, National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, India
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
2012
VIP Art Fair, Online
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
Mumbai Gallery Weekend, Mumbai, India
Cynical Love: Life in the Everyday, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, India
ProjectStage, Art Stage Singapore, Singapore
2011
(M)other India, Galerie du Jour – Agnès B., Paris, France
Window in the Wall, Pearl Lam Galleries, Shanghai, China
Fabular Bodies, Harmony Art Foundation, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai
CROSSROADS: India escalate (India Pavilion), Prague Biennale 5, Prague, Czech Republic
New Trends from South India, Lalit Kala Academy, Chennai, India
Group Show, India Art Summit, New Delhi, India
2010
Finding India: Art for the New Century, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan
Artissima 17 International Fair of Contemporary Art in Torino, Torino, Italy
The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2005-2008
loosentiefirst, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India
789, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India
Chronicles of the Unspoken, Travancore Gallery, Delhi, India
Show-off, Kitab Mahal, Mumbai, India
Group Show, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, India
Student Show, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India
Residencies
2013
Krinzinger Projekte/One World Foundation, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Collections
Major collections in India, Japan, Russia, Netherlands, France, USA, UK, including the Burger Collection, Switzerland, the Swagemakers collection, Netherlands, the Karen and Duncan Collection, USA, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India amongst others.
Press Quotes
“In every good exhibition, if it’s really good, there will be good paintings...And in Art Brussels, the one that really stole the show was from Indian artist T. Venkanna, represented by Maskara Gallery from Mumbai. There is a vibrant, life and death quality to all of Venkanna’s work, though I personally most enjoyed this painting. Though it is dark and features the face of death, it rises also with such urgency that it seems to spring to life. The multi-layered compositions and deft use of colors further expand not only the painting’s depth, but its reach. It’s no longer European or Indian painting – it’s pure, vibrant, source of life painting.” - Hadelin Feront, May 1 2011, Pulp Gazette – Art Laboratory and Journal, Brussels, Belgium
"Constantly immediate and with raw openness, T. Venkanna creates new art for a new world. His storytelling takes various forms through constellations of images, collage, pastiche, the recourse to allegory, painting - all ways of thinking-in-pictures from which understanding emerges without having to be expounded." - Sonia Nazareth, Feb 15, 2011, Art & Deal, India
"Mumbai painters T. Venkanna and Atul Dodiya variously hijack twentieth-century westerners such as Henri Rousseau and Jasper Johns, in paintings that force Western primitivism and avant-gardism into historical dialogue with the mixed iconography of India's aesthetic traditions and its urban present" - JJ Charlesworth, Feb 4, 2010, Time Out London, UK
"T Venkanna's reworked versions of Douanier Rousseau are fun and sexy..." - Adrian Searle, Feb 2, 2010, The Guardian, UK
"As the gallery going crowd dubs him one of the more radical voices in today's Indian Contemporary art scene..."T Venkanna, a bold and scathing Hyderabad artist explores a world of fantasy" - Georgina Maddox, Jan 12, 2009, The Indian Express, India
"A young artist pushes the limits of sexual imagination" - Vishwas Kulkarni, Jan 30, 2009, Mumbai Mirror, India
"The Baroda based artist, whose works focus on the sexual imagination, re-visits motifs and imageries from artists like Mondrian, Henri Rousseau, and other classical examples, but irreparably tweaks them with his patented perversity" - Vishwas Kulkarni, Sep 27, 2008, Mumbai Mirror, India
"Subversive, daring imagery inspired by the profane and the prohibited" - Georgina Maddox, Sep 24, 2008
Artist Statement
The predominant subject in T. Venkanna's works is sexual imagination which questions and confronts the stereotypical ways in which sexuality is understood and defined.
"The sexual behavior of human beings is habituated by societal norms and conditions. I believe it is due to this, that sexual fantasy gains importance in a human being's life and an individual achieves extreme pleasure out of this simple act of day-dreaming, wherein s/he escapes from the harsh realities of this world via an undisturbed and uninterrupted flight of imagination."
"In this endeavor of mine, I also have been (re)presenting certain imageries/motifs taken from artists of yester years [like Hockney, Rousseau, Mondrian, etc.] as well as from specific forms of traditional art. The political and social contexts underlying these works were quite different when they were made. I re-present these imageries according to my idea, in the process critically evaluating the norms and terms that exist within contemporary society."
His continuous persistence with this subject has stimulated his interest to explore image-making in all kinds of media, including drawing, painting, embroidery, sculpture, installation, and performance. Venkanna's most important linguistic device is the integration of the personal and the social using material as per the subject's requirement with complete freedom and ease.