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November 2004 New York - Bose Pacia Gallery presents
The Imposter in the Waiting Room, a new installation work by
Raqs Media Collective from November 11th through December 23rd, 2004. The gallery is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 pm and by appointment. There will be an opening reception and gallery walk-through on Thursday, November 11th from 6 to 9pm. The public is invited.
Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1991 by independent media practitioners Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Based in New Delhi, their works interpret the ontologies of urbanism, modernity and city spaces using video, photography, performance, text, sound and print. By exploring the mutable interrelationships between urban landscapes and modes of living, they highlight the tensions that determine how individual and global realities are constructed.
Traversing across a lexicon of images, gestures and inscriptions, Raqs has successfully invented novel visual concepts that question artistic conventions, systems of representation, and multiplicity of space. This exhibition could be seen as a critical encounter with new art practices that embody both cultural and political derivatives of modernity. As Raqs explains, "the installation encloses histories of those who have attempted the trek before us. It underscores especially the stances of those who change tracks, who deviate from the itinerary, who trespass, who appear in new guises, who enter territories where their very presence challenges the stable accounts of what that space is, who can be in it, or lay claim to it, and how things came to be this way. "
The themes explored are not stylized abstractions but defined according to the textures of a networked world based on specific ideologies. The imposter exemplifies the kind of performative agency that renders people capable of expressing more than one kind of truth about themselves to the investigations of power. The figure of the imposter represents a strategy for life that is a calculated response to the growing intensity of scrutiny. The imposter achieves this with a multiplicity of guises. Waiting rooms everywhere are full of imposters who are biding time and waiting to be auditioned, verified and questioned. How are experiences within these spaces defined? Can they cross the threshold and arrive on a plane where 'history is truly made'? Raqs Media Collective invites you to enter the waiting room to get to know the impostors that inhabit it and examine their histories.
Raqs Media Collective has exhibited at the world's leading art venues, including the Liverpool Biennial 2004, the Taipei Biennial 2004, ISEA 2004, the Venice Biennale 2003, Documenta 11, Ars Electronica 2002, and the Walker Art Center. The artists co-founded Sarai (www.sarai.net) and produce their work at the Sarai Media Lab in Delhi, India.