Biography

Contemporary artist and art historian Anita Dube’s practice is primarily based in sculpture but also includes photography, video, installation and performance. Trained as a critic and historian in the Indian city of Baroda (now Vadodara) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she later turned to making artworks informed by memory, history, mythology and phenomenological experience.

Though always mercurial and self-critical, her practice has evolved with specific materials—velvet and other fabrics used as skins for found objects; the copper and enamel eyes used on temple statuary; and re-cycled packing materials. In the past decade, she has become increasingly involved with language and texts as her subjects, used both as metaphorical devices and abstract epistemologies.

Dube’s work has featured in numerous solo shows, including Yours Disparately, Anita Dube, Nature Morte, New Delhi (2014); Chance Pieces, Nature Morte, Berlin (2013); Recent Works, Gallery Marabini, Bologna, Italy (2012); and Babel, Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris (2011). She was the curator of the 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2018).

She was one of eight artists included in Nature Morte’s first show in India held at the new India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (1997). Her works have been included in most of the important museum survey exhibitions of contemporary art from India mounted in the past decade, including Indian Summer, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2005); India Moderna, Institut d'Art Modern, Valencia, Spain (2008); Where Three Dreams Cross, Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2010); and Paris-Delhi-Bombay, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011).

Her works can be found in the collection of Tate Modern, London; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; and Devi Art Foundation, Gurugram, India, among others.

Born in 1958 in Lucknow, India, Dube currently lives and works in New Delhi.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2021

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