Saturday 16 September 2006, 11.30–12.00
Saturday 16 September 2006, 15.30–16.00
Saturday 16 September 2006, 17.30–18.00

Swathed in a shell of white embroidered fabric, two bodies appear in the urban landscape, adapting to the architecture of the site. The straightjacket-cum-exoskeleton that links two artists – Tejal Shah and Varsha Nair – is joined at the arms, forming a connected ‘bridge’ that nevertheless speaks of distances between people.

In generating this project, Shah (Mumbai) and Nair (Bangkok) exchanged ideas by email about their respective interests in the edge of everyday normality and in the loneliness evident within the teeming cities in which they live.

With Encounter(s), Shah and Nair create a durational tableau vivant within and responding to the public spaces of Tate Modern.

Tate Modern  Throughout the gallery
Free, no bookings taken

  

Biographies

Tejal Shah lives and works in Mumbai, India.

Her selected solo shows include Gallerie Mirchandani+Steinruecke, Mumbai, 2006; What Are You?, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, 2006; and The Tomb of Democracy, Pruss & Ochs, Berlin, 2003.

Her selected group shows include Sub-Contingent: The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 2006; Present-Future, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2005; and Indian Summer, Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2005.

Tejal Shah is also co-founder, organiser and curator for Larzish: International Film Festival of Sexuality and Gender Plurality, India, 2003–4, www.larzish.org.

Varsha Nair lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand.

Her selected shows include Sub-Contingent: The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art, Fondazion Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 2006; NRLA, Glasgow, UK, 2006, www.newterritories.co.uk ; In-between Places, Meeting Point, Si-am Art Space, Bangkok, 2005 (solo); Video as Urban Condition, Austrian Culture Forum, London, 2004, www.video-as.org; With(in), Art In General, New York, 2002, www.artingeneral.org. Nair is also organiser and co-curator of No Man's Land, a web project for Womanifesto 2006, www.womanifesto.com.

See also:

  UBS Openings: Saturday Live: Mapping Mumbai   Saturday 16 September 2006

  UBS Openings: Saturday Live: Between the Familiar/Unfamiliar,: the Home and Heart, Beats a Golden Kiss: Monali Meher   Saturday 16 September 2006   free

  UBS Openings: Saturday Live: Migration and [Dis]location   Saturday 16 September 2006

  UBS Openings: Saturday Live: D'Archetypes, Sujata Goel and Tarek Halaby, and Mukul   Saturday 16 September 2006   free