United Art Fair 2013
The second annual edition of India’s United Art Fair will take place in New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan, 14-17 September, 2013.
The organisers have promised an artist-driven (as opposed to a gallery-driven) international fair, aiming to “continue to expand the parameters of contemporary art by looking at a wider variety of disciplines, practitioners, media and materials.”
Painting, sculpture and photography will continue to be the most numerous of the works on display, but the fair this year will also include examples from other disciplines and fields, including ceramics, fashion, furniture, graphic art and textiles.
The fair is curated by Peter Nagy, founder and director of Nature Morte, with galleries in Delhi, Gurgaon and Berlin, accompanied by a team of five curators: Dr Alka Pande, Chief Curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the Indian Habitat Centre in Delhi; Ram Rahman, photographer, graphic designer and founding member of the activist collective SAHMAT; critic and curator Heidi Fichtner; critic and curator Meera Menezes, critic and curator Mayank Kaul.
As Asia’s biggest artist-driven art fair, United Art Fair has several special features that make it distinct from other fairs, say the organisers. “While the galleries play a major role in participating in these fairs, United Art Fair creates an exclusive platform for artists from all over India and abroad,” asserts Annurag Sharma, Founder and Director.
“Our executives would create a conducive atmosphere for the buyers and collectors to meet the artists, discuss their aesthetics and buy the works at a very reasonable price.
“We have taken a pan-national approach and we would like to bring in the artists from the small towns and other cities so that they get a chance to exhibit their works before an international audience, along with other established artists from the urban centres,” says Vikash Kumar, art historian, critic and curator and Associate Director of United Art Fair.
The fair will be organized into a variety of spaces to accommodate both group and solo shows of works by artists. While the emphasis will be on younger, undiscovered talent new to the marketplace and outside of existing gallery systems, the works of senior artists whose works have been overlooked will also be available to view and for sale.
Through exhibition and installation strategies, the organisers add, dialogues between disciplines and generations will be created, visual excitement will take precedence over academic categorizations. In addition, collaborative projects will be developed with a variety of arts organizations and companies. United Art Fair website. Buy a Link on this page
