Jitish Kallat is one of the most exciting and dynamic Asian artists to have received international recognition in recent years. Working across a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography and installation, his work reflects a deep involvement with the city of his birth (Mumbai) and derives much of its visual language from his immediate urban environment. His subject matter has been described previously as 'the dirty, old, recycled and patched-together fabric of urban India'. Wider concerns include India's attempts to negotiate its entry into a globalised economy, addressing housing and transportation crises, city planning, caste and communal tensions, and government accountability.

Many of Kallat's works focus on Mumbai's downtrodden or dispossessed inhabitants, though treating them in a bold, colourful and highly graphic manner. Kallat traditionally mounts his paintings on bronze sculptures that are re-created from the wall adornments found on the 120-year-old Victoria Terminus train station in the centre of Mumbai.

“The city street is my university. One finds all the themes of life and art – pain, happiness, anger, violence and compassion – played out here in full volume. Scale is merely one of the many tools one can deploy in the creation of meaning, and decisions such as big, small, lifesize, etc., are as much acts of meaning creation as they may be retinal or aesthetic considerations.” Jitish Kallat, quoted in The Asian Art Newspaper, February 2010

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) launched in 2012 and has distinguished itself by the scale of its ambition. Its production values reflect the personalities and ethos of founders Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, as does the selection of its curators, who have the monumental task of framing the idea of what is contemporary within the context of...

In 2012, Jitish Kallat was invited by the Advisory Council of Public Art, Lower Austria to conceive of a large scale public art work to be installed in their public spaces. This commission is the result of collaborative action by the mayors of 10 townships and the Advisory Council constituted by experts of the art world. Rendered...

In 1997, Jane Farver, the farsighted and much-loved American curator who died in April in Venice, put together an influential exhibition called “Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora” at the Queens Museum.It was one of the few surveys of its kind in the United States up to that time, and Ms. Farver was careful...

In Kochi, things begin auspiciously: at precisely 12:12 on 12 December 2014, the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was inaugurated, opening the gates to the the first set of crowds eager to see new and exciting works by international and Indian artists alike.This year, the Biennale is curated by renowned Indian artist Jitish Kallat,...