Aug 30, 2010
This Week: Our sixth season kicks off with a great interview with artist Jitish Kallat. We talk about his work, his installation at the Art Institute, and what it is like to live and work in an art scene in a city with 14 million people. If that weren't enough, curator Dr. Madhuvanti Ghose chimes in as well!
The following shameless lifted from the AIC web site:
Public Notice 3
September 11, 2010–January 2, 2011
Grand Staircase
Overview: In the first major presentation in an American museum of
Jitish Kallat’s work, the contemporary Indian artist has designed a
site-specific installation that connects two key historical
moments—the First World Parliament of Religions held on September
11, 1893, and the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon on that very date, 108 years later. The resulting
work, Public Notice 3, creates a trenchant commentary on the
evolution, or devolution, of religious tolerance across the 20th
and 21st centuries.
The basis for Kallat’s installation is a landmark speech delivered
by Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament, which was held in
conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in
what is now the museum’s Fullerton Hall. The Parliament was the
earliest attempt to create a global dialogue of religious faiths,
and Vivekananda, eloquently addressing its 7,000 attendees, argued
for an end of fanaticism and a respectful recognition of all
traditions of belief through universal tolerance.
With Public Notice 3, Kallat converts Vivekananda’s text to LED
displays on each of the 118 risers of the historic Woman’s Board
Grand Staircase of the Art Institute of Chicago, adjacent to the
site of Vivekananda’s original address. Drawing attention to the
great chasm between this speech of tolerance and the very different
events of September 11, 2001, the text of the speech will be
displayed in the colors of the United States’ Department of
Homeland Security alert system. Opening on September 11, Public
Notice 3 explores the possibility of revisiting the historical
speech as a site of contemplation, symbolically refracting it with
threat codes devised by a government to deal with this
terror-infected era of religious factionalism and fanaticism.
Curator: Dr. Madhuvanti Ghose, Marilynn Alsdorf Curator of Indian
and Islamic Art.