Mohit Prakash Shelare

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Explorations will examine how the trauma of seeing violent imagery across the internet including social media can be sublimated through artistic processes of drawing. Mohit Prakash Shelare is the Coordinator for this project.

Mohit is a Mumbai based contemporary artist, who did his BFA from JJ School of Art and MFA from Shiv Nadar University. He has participated in Stiftung Futur: Herzlich Willkommen (Art Residency) Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland and the prestigious Home Workspace Program, at Ashkal Alwan, The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Beirut, Lebanon in 2019. He has also participated in the Student’s Biennale at Kochi in 2016 and at the Five Million Incidents at Goethe Institut, Delhi in 2019. Mohit’s practice is primarily based on his body as a site of endurance performance. Through his body he raises questions regarding the politics of representation and embodiment which leads to performative research in hybrid media. Given his experience he is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

This project titled Image Syndrome will derive violent images as subjects from the internet including Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and Mohit will experiment with drawing these with ink and create texts including hand lettering. He is curious about the process of transforming screen images into black ink drawings and the effect of the time of day when these drawings are made and internalised. The project will delve into the politics of the image, its materiality, temporal resonances and ways in which artistic processes can influence its impact. This exploration of temporality is in tune with Mohit’s work with long-duration endurance-based performance art, where the artist’s body bears the testimony of time. Moreover, these explorations will take the form of lecture performances.

This project is also a critique of the media consumption habits in the advent of mobile internet technology, accelerated by social media. It will examine how we have been desensitised by the constant bombardment of images. While critiquing the numbness caused by the violent imagery, Mohit says, “Receiving this imagery of violence on our phones becomes a regular activity of life, leading to violence as the new normal.” The political subtext of this project is also a critique of the way ruling dispensations make use of ‘clickworkers’ who are employed as trolls. The accelerated dissemination of violent imagery is often channelled through these ‘clickworkers’ as means to legitimise power and terrorise dissenting voices.

The outcome of the project will be a series of drawings and lecture performances. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a documentation of the drawings and lecture performances, along with screen recordings and videos created during the process. 

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to capture the trauma of public violence in the subcontinent and mediate it through process-based artistic explorations like drawings and lecture performances.  

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.