IMAGINARIUM 6.0

Emami Art presents Insubordinate Matter, the exhibition of the sixth edition of IMAGINARIUM, Emami Art’s Annual All-India Open Call for Young and Emerging Artist.   

Emami Art is committed to nurturing and supporting the practices of emerging and mid-career visual artists across India. Launched in 2020 as an urgent response to the pandemic’s disruption of artistic livelihoods, the annual IMAGINARIUM Awards and Exhibition has since evolved into a vital ecosystem of support, offering cash awards, exhibition, mentorship, and sustained discursive engagement for young visual artists. Over the past five years, IMAGINARIUM Open Call has grown into one of the most anticipated open calls in India’s contemporary art calendar.  

This year, the open call drew 1200 + portfolios, which were shortlisted and then reviewed by a jury of prominent personalities led by Ibrahim Mahama, May Makki, Siddharth Somaiya, and Shaunak Mahbubani, and Emami Art Director and Head Curator Ushmita Sahu. Ten artists have been selected for the exhibition, three of whom receive the IMAGINARIUM Awards. 

The IMAGINARIUM Awards 

IMAGINARIUM gives substantial awards in support of artistic practice: a First Award of INR 2 lakh, a Second Award of INR 1.5 lakh and a Third Award of INR 1 lakh, supported by the Emami Foundation and the Kolkata Centre for Creativity. This year the First Award is conferred on Bhagyashri Dange, the Second on Sonu Pujar, and the Third on Subhash Deka. All ten artists are presented in the exhibition. 

About the exhibition 

Insubordinate Matter brings together ten emerging artists who share a striking commitment to making by hand and to working with material: clay and glass, cloth and natural dye, wax, wood and reclaimed rubber. The exhibition takes as its starting point a simple idea, that material is not passive but active, that it holds memory and carries meaning of its own. The works move between two concerns, the body and what it inherits, and the natural world under strain, and together they make a case for the enduring power of the made object at a time when so much dissolves into the immaterial. 

Participating artists