Surabhi Ghosh: What’s mine is yours
This exhibition surveys the last decade of Montreal-based Surabhi Ghosh’s sculptural work, including several collaborations and a new piece, Within / Without. The artist’s practice frequently employs patterning, modularity, and repetition, as well as the material and formal qualities of textiles to create installations that are flexible and responsive to different architectural contexts
Who “owns” an artistic work? Is it collective property, the product of a cultural tradition? Is it the product of an individual genius? Is the owner whomever has the means to possess it? What’s mine is yours. The exhibition’s title, chosen by the artist, alludes to the broader social, political, cultural, even emotional implications of what might first appear to be an austere and abstract approach to sculpture, grounded in the humble materials and anonymous labour of a craft tradition, and the seamless rationality of modern design. Using accessible, non-precious, sometimes even discarded materials, and capitalizing on their resistant strength as well as their adaptability, Ghosh transforms use-value into “thought-value”
The work reflects on the creative potential an ethos of anonymity, collective creation, structure dependent on patient patterning, and resistance to the cult of individualism and private property. At the same time, she asserts her own personal intervention, distinct from the public cultural politics of nation-building, employing both the position of the artist and the site of the gallery as mediators between isolation and incorporation.
-Pan Wendt, Curator
Photo cutline: Surabhi Ghosh, Squaring Circles, 2017, upholstery vinyl, steel pins. Photo by Guy L’Heureux.