Reena Saini Kallat (born 1973) is an Indian visual artist. She currently lives and works in Mumbai.[1]
Early life
Reena Saini Kallat was born in 1973 in Delhi, India. She graduated from Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in 1996 with a B.F.A. in painting. Her practice spanning drawing, photography, sculpture and video engages diverse materials, imbued with conceptual underpinnings. Her works reference history, collective memory and identity. Using the motif of the rubberstamp both as object and imprint, signifying the bureaucratic apparatus, Reena has worked with officially recorded or registered names of people, objects, and monuments that are lost or have disappeared without a trace, only to get listed as anonymous and forgotten statistics. Lines of Control is a recurring element in her works led by the impact that partition had on her family who were displaced from Lahore. In her works made with electrical cables, wires usually serving as conduits of contact that transmit ideas and information, become painstakingly woven entanglements that morph into barbed wires like barriers, while another series where she uses salt as a medium explores the tenuous yet intrinsic relationship between the body and the oceans, highlighting the fragility and unpredictability of existence. To expose the arbitrariness of territorial-skirmishes, Reena frequently draws attention to ecosystems and indigenous vegetation.
Career
She has widely exhibited across the world in venues such as Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich; Tate Modern, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Kennedy Centre, Washington; Vancouver Art Gallery; Saatchi Gallery, London; SESC Pompeia and SESC Belenzino in São Paulo; Goteborgs Konsthall, Sweden; Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Casa Asia, Madrid and Barcelona; ZKM Karlsruhe in Germany; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; Hangar Bicocca, Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; IVAM Museum, Spain; Busan MOMA; Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland; Chicago Cultural Centre amongst many others. She lives and works in Mumbai.
Select solo exhibitions
Orchard of Home-grown Secrets, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai and Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai (1998)[2]
Skin, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai and Art Inc. Gallery, New Delhi (2000)[2]
Seven Faces of Dust, Chicago Radio, Mumbai (2002)[2]
The Battlefield Is The Mind, Sakshi Gallery, Bangalore (2002)[2]
Black Flute, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai 2004
Black Flute (And Other Stories), Nature Morte, New Delhi (2005)[2]
Rainbow Of Refuse, Bodhi Art Gallery, Mumbai (2006)[2]
Subject to Change without Notice, Walsh Gallery, Chicago (2008)[2]
Silt of Seasons, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2008)[2]
India Re-worlded: Seventy years of Investigating a Nation, curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, Gallery Odyssey, Mumbai (2017)
On the Horizon the Shadow Speaks another story’ title Nuit Blanche Toronto at Drake Commissary curated by November Paynter, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2017)
Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace, Nahargarh Fort, Jaipur (2017)
Make a Change, curated by Torun Ekstrand, Norrtalje Museum + Konsthall, Sweden (2017)
Borders: Us and Them, curated by Qian Lin, NYU Shanghai Art Gallery, China (2017)
Transforming Vision: 21st century art from the Pizzuti Collection, Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio (2017)
CONNECTING THREADS: Textiles in Contemporary Practice, Curated by Tasneem Mehta and Puja Vaish, Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2018)
ANIMALS: Art, Science, Nature, Society, Curated by Professor Jeffrey Shaw, CityU Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong (2018)
Untold Stories Manifesto, Curated by Valentina Levy, 2nd edition of Something Else OFF Biennale Cairo, Egypt (2018)
Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace, Curated by Peter Nagy, Nahargarh Fort, Jaipur (2018)
Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada, curated by Catherine Crowston and Jonathan Shaughnessy, Art Gallery of Alberta (2018)
Fearless: Contemporary South Asian Art, curated by Natalie Seiz, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2018)
Modus Operandi, curated by Shireen Gandhy, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2018)
Tate Exchange – Building an Art Biennale, curated by Sunil Maghnani and Ed D’Souza, Tate Modern London (2018)
Contemporary Art Acquisitions, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2018)
Facing India, curated by Dr. Uta Ruhkamp, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2018)
Asymmetrical Objects, curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2018)
Sensorium: The End is Only the Beginning, Sunaparanta, Goa (2018)
2020 Horniman Circle Gardens, Mumbai, India (2018)
When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art, curated by Eva Respini and Ruth Erickson, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2019)[25]
Tomorrow’s Tigers, Specially Commissioned Rugs, Royal Academy of Art, Academicians Room, London (2019)
‘Open Borders’, 14th Curitiba International Biennial, curated by Adolfo Montejo Navas and Tereza de Arruda, Museum Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil (2019)
MODUS OPERANDI II, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2019)
Fracture/Fiction: Selections from the ILHAM Collection, ILHAM Gallery, Malaysia (2019)
Continental Shift: Contemporary Art and South Asia, curated by Rodney James, Bunjil Place Gallery, Victoria, Australia (2019)
The Construction of the Possible, curated by the team at Wifredo Lam Centre for Contemporary Art, 13TH Havana Biennial, Cuba (2019)
Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada, curated by Catherine Crowston and Jonathan Shaughnessy, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada (2019)
Alteration/Activation/Abstraction, curated by Betty Seid, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York (2019)
Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada, curated by Catherine Crowston and Jonathan Shaughnessy, National Gallery of Canada (2019)
Making Art: Materials & Technology, Piramal Museum of Art, Mumbai (2019)
Distilled Blueprints, curated by Veerangana Solanki, Alembic group, Baroda (2019)
Tomorrow’s Tigers, Specially Commissioned Rugs, Laura Culpan + Susie Allen Co-Directors Artwise Sotheby’s, London (2019)
ANIMALS: Art, Science, Nature, Society, Curated by Professor Jeffrey Shaw, National Palace Museum, Taiwan (2019)
Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada, The Art Museum of the University of Toronto (2019)
The Idea of the Acrobat, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2020) [26]
Potential Worlds 1: Planetary Memories, curated by Heike Munder and Suad Garayeva-Maleki , Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich (2020)
Displaced: Contemporary Artists Confront The Global Refugee Crisis, curated by Irene Hofmann and Brandee Caoba, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2020)[27][28]
Unflattening, The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2020)
Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada, Curated by Catherine Crowston and Jonathan Shaughnessy, The McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada (2020)
3rd International Biennial of Asuncion Paraguay Curatorial team: Dannys Montes de Oca, Bettina Brizuela, Damian Cabrera and Omar Estrada, Paraguay (2020)
Women artists from Asia: Dancing Queen, Arario Gallery Cheonan (2020)
Holding Space, South South Veza, Online Viewing Rooms (OVR’s) by 50+ galleries (2021)
On l Site, Collaborative project organised by four Indian galleries, presented by Nature Morte at Bikaner House, New Delhi (2021)
After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Lee Gallery, South Carolina, USA (2021)
Tree Story curated by Charlotte Day, MUMA Melbourne (2021)
When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art, curated by Eva Respini and Ruth Erickson, Cantor Arts Centre at Stanford University (2021)
In 2002 Kallat was an artist-in-residence in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec at the Boreal Art and Nature Centre in Canada.[1] In 2011 she was awarded an IASPIS residency to work and study in Gothenburg, Sweden.[1]
Awards
Kallat has been the recipient of a number of awards, including:
