Next year, Fotofest will celebrate a first in its history. The Houston-based nonprofit announced on Thursday that it will focus on artworks from India.
The festival, titled “India: Contemporary Photography and New Media Art,” will present the latest creative output of Indian artists and the Indian diaspora.
According to lead curator Sunil Gupta, the biennial promises to be one of the most exciting and engaging editions to date.
“As a large, multilingual subcontinent, India has always relied on images to maintain a cohesive whole across myriad subcultures, regions, castes and languages,” Gupta said in a statement. He went on to give a few clues about what to expect, saying, “This exhibition will address the legacy of the last 20 years, a period when photography and moving image media have been consistently included within critical exhibitions of fine art.”
Sunil Gupta, Lead Curator, FOTOFEST 2018 BIENNIAL. Courtesy of Charan Singh.
With over 275,000 visitors over the course of its six-week run, the event is one of the largest and most respected photography fairs in the US, and offers a platform for emerging Indian photographers to gain a new audience.
Drawing on the dialogue of a long and exciting history the exhibition is slated to include snapshots of a variety of themes including art photography, installation, moving image, journalism, and documentary photography.
The list of participating artists has yet to be announced, but visitors can expect images addressing a variety of themes pertinent to contemporary Indian society such as caste and class, gender and sexuality, religion, nationalism, and technological development.