The ‘Public’ in Public Art | A Conversation between Salila P Vanka, S Madhuri Rao and Ravi Kumar Kashi | Project Showcase@IFA | July 27, 2023

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)
invites you to
The ‘Public’ in Public Art*: Exploring Spatial Politics of a City
with Salila P Vanka, S Madhuri Rao and Ravi Kumar Kashi
and a discussion with John Xaviers

Thursday, July 27, 2023 | 06:30 PM IST onwards | Zoom and Facebook Live

How do state and civil society shape the visual culture of a city? How much of the public is truly involved in ‘public’ art and in what ways are these engagements formed?

Join us to listen to Salila P Vanka, S Madhuri Rao and Ravi Kumar Kashi as they discuss their research project that investigated how public sculptures and statues are signifiers of the spatial politics of a city. Through a study of public statues and figures in Bangalore since the 1990s, the session will explore the dialectics between the strategy of the state and the tactics of the civil society in shaping the visual culture of Bangalore, and how these visual markers are not just statements of public adulation and aspirations, but also reflect the city’s social, cultural, political and spatial milieu. Based on the premise that public art in a city is inevitably political, the session will also look into how the public engages with, and forms, the visual culture of Bangalore.

Salila P Vanka is an academic based in Bangalore, with research interests spanning urban theory, participatory governance and spatial politics in the Global South.

S Madhuri Rao is an architect. She worked as a collaborator with Salila on this project.

Ravi Kumar Kashi is a visual artist and educator who was a collaborator on this project.

Salila Prasad Vanka is the Project Coordinator of the Foundation Project implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Project 560 programme. This has been made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.

This session is organised as part of the Project Showcase@IFA, a series of online presentations to showcase, discuss and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support and implement across programmes.

Image Credit: Salila P Vanka

*Partially taken from the name of Salila’s research project “Sensing and Shaping the “Public” in Public Art: Street Aesthetics in Bangalore”

Click here to register for the presentation on Zoom

The session will also be live streamed on our Facebook page, for which no prior registration is required.