The great Indian art festival, right here… every day!

Santanu Borah tells you why Abir Pothi is needed, pandemic or no pandemic

If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we cannot sit on our couches and believe that life will be the same always because your wifi and mutual funds are working. Just when everything seems perfect, you will get that curve ball which will swoosh around your eyes and hit you in the back of your head. That’s the reason I love old proverbs. The general wisdom they espouse really works. For instance, being prepared is half the victory.

The reason I am talking about this is because the entire art world, more or else, was crippled after the corona virus decided it wasn’t fun simply being in Wuhan. As the virus became a world traveller, the traditional idea that you had to labour through museums and art galleries if you were an art connoisseur, fell to entropy rather quickly and lay in ruins within a month. The lockdown ensured that we would need fresh eyes to see how to see art again. Apologies for that mild tongue twister.

With zoom meetings replacing other time intensive physical meetings and formal dressing turning into a top-only event, art also had to take the exclusive virtual route. Countless programmes happened online, including art lessons, for a far smaller fee as the logistics were reduced to mobile phones, computers and a good net connection. Virtual gallery tours, which were a novelty earlier, became common place, and social distancing norms ensured you stood alone in front of the Monalisa and there were no Japanese tourist photographing it around you. In short, believing became seeing.

A more practical concern was, would such a way of conducting work result in any real business? As we have seen, the older business models where the physical was the normal had to be shut down or downsized. Survival meant going online innovatively and, curiously, even when social distancing norms were relaxed, online presence actually reaffirmed physical existence. The old truth that virtual life would be the future, now not only knocks on our door but stays in our rooms, and often sleeps on our beds in our tablets. The Louvre has finally come home.

With Abir Space, it was no different, except for one thing. After over five years of steady growth and the consequent strengthening of the foundation of our artists base and physical events on our platform, we needed to bring Abir Space home to you. We decided we would do that via our considerable real time resources, along with Pothi, our virtual webzine on emerging Indian art, most of which is young. Even more than this, what we noticed is that in India while do have virtual art market places, we do not have a substantial conversational space, especially for young Indian emerging art, where unheard voices sing beautifully in remote isolation. If a flower blooms in the forest and nobody has seen it, it is still a flower in bloom and that’s the flower we wanted to bring to you.

Without waylaying you in more metaphors, I would like to say something simple – as an artist, a curator, collector or even a first-time buyer, is there a Bible that you can refer to in order to understand the inner life of Indian art? Right now, not really. We do not have a comprehensive resource where we can not only see, but converse, discuss, opine and regard Indian art that is great (and seeks no western approval), but operates in the silence of last mile or small-town oblivion. Abir Pothi seeks to be that special place, where you will be able to connect with your real colours. The proportion of this exercise is so big that operating in a virtual theatre was necessary, pandemic or no pandemic, business or no business.

If you love art or wish to know what it is, without getting lost in the jargon of typical elitism, Abir Space + Pothi will be your map and guide book in this labyrinth of Indian art. We shall discover beauty and knowledge together. We shall praise and criticise together. We shall be enriched together. And we will do this in a space that is not stiff, but informal and fun.