Ranjit Hoskote is a cultural theorist, independent curator and poet. He is the author of six books, including three collections of poetry, a translation, an edited anthology of contemporary Indian poetry in English, and a critical biography of the distinguished painter, Jehangir Sabavala (Pilgrim, Exile, Sorcerer, 1998). Since 1994, Hoskote has curated eight exhibitions of contemporary art, ranging in preoccupation from formal abstractionism to inter-media installation; most recently, he was co-curator for the trans-Asian collaborative exhibition project, ‘Under Construction’ (Tokyo, 2002-2003).

In the course of this talk, Ranjit Hoskote proposes to address the peculiar circumstances by which contemporary Indian art today finds itself, simultaneously, celebrated and misunderstood. While artists have won themselves a measure of public visibility, usually for the wrong reasons, their work remains subject to misapprehension. On the one hand, its aesthetic exploration of inter-media, installation and performance idioms does not win favour with patrons who belong to a bourgeoisie whose tastes tend towards the conventional, even conservative. On the other hand, its political concern with the crises of collective life and its usage of iconographies and narratives that are regarded as the monopoly of faith, have rendered it vulnerable to censorship by violence.In this scenario, how do contemporary Indian artists negotiate their environment?

How does the conversation of the artworld map on to other concurrent conversations, such as those of faith, politicised religiosity, social activism, and political resistance? At the centre of these questions is the old-fashioned art-historical question of taste – which demands to be examined afresh, so that we may ask ourselves: How do we respond to works of art?