SAHIL NAIK

Early life and Influences

Born in Goa, India, in 1991, Sahil Naik was influenced early on by the myriad of architectural styles in his neighbourhood. His penchant for construction was encouraged through the building of ritualistic effigies during the Narakasur festival in Goa. Naik earned a BFA from the Goa College of Arts, and a master’s from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, specialising in sculpture for both degrees.

Works

Naik’s debut solo show, Ground Zero: Site as Witness/Architecture as Evidence, was held in 2018 at Experimenter in Kolkata. The exhibition was concerned with urban displacement and the ways in which modern Indian architecture bears witness to human history.

Many sculptural works in the show looked like models for dilapidated buildings. The five-by-five-foot sculpture Lazaretto (2017), for example—made of wood, sun board, corrugated sheet, fibre glass, electric wires and galvanised wires—resembled a dilapidated and ghostly neighbourhood block, and reflected how buildings are often abandoned as an afterthought due to rapid urban development and political pressures. Naik sees such sculptural works as conveying the afterlife of buildings, at a time when they are ‘visited only by the outcasts, robbers, vandals, adventure seekers; by the others, the homeless and the vulnerable.’

In Naik’s second solo show Monuments, Mausoleums, Memorials, Modernism at Experimenter in 2020, the artist explored the effects that government reform and nation-building projects have had on architecture in India. The exhibition investigated the effects of government reform and nation-building projects on existing architectural identities.

Exhibitions and Awards

Sahil Naik is the recipient of awards such as the Jury Prize, Centre of International Modern Art; CIMA Awards 2017, Kolkata Arts Festival; and The Chinmoy Pramanick Memorial Award for Excellence 2016, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Selected solo exhibitions include All Is Water, And To Water We Must Return (2021), Monuments, Mausoleums, Memorials, Modernism (2020), and Ground Zero (2017–18), Experimenter, Kolkata.

Group shows include Urban Reimagined 2.0, Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2019); 37 Sinkings, Five Million Incidents, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi & Kolkata (2019); Dynamic Garden in Full Motion, Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Aomori, Japan (2018); and Students Biennale, Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India (2016–17).

Naik’s website can be found here.

Moksha Kumar | Ocula | 2021