The Empire Strikes Back

Indian art has gone through a boom period in parallel with the extraordinary economic rise of the subcontinent from an agrarian state to a high tech axis of the new global economy. With new money came a new gallery system. With bigger spaces came bigger art and the sheer scale of ambition led to a break into the international market, which is always keen to find a new spectacular presence in the art world. The new art has also been created against a background of communal tension and violence. The exploration of identity, a common enterprise for artists internationally, is all the more challenging in the context of India under transformation.