Chennai | Five art shows that you should not miss this week

Here are five art shows in Chennai you should not miss this week

If you are a lover of the arts, there is no better time to be in Chennai. As the all-encompassing ode to classical arts — the Margazhi season — came to an end , contemporary arts started taking over white cubes, museums campuses, shopping malls, and (soon) MRT stations in the city, much to the small but steadily growing art community’s delight. 

Today, Chennai has the option to gallery-hop through the day, and savour bites pleasing to the eye and mind, from across the country and even the world. We pick five shows, part of Chennai Photo Biennale, that are currently on in the city that could be worth your time: 

The Sunil Gupta retrospective, Love and Light: 

The mighty trees at the Egmore museum campus today are not only witness to lazy readers, picnicking families, and students stooping into books, but also huge portraits and smaller narrative frames that make one pause and ponder, and sometimes gasp. Veteran photographer Sunil Gupta, through his life’s work, explores how the camera shaped his identity as a gay man in the 1970s. Frames snaking through the open premises near the iconic Museum Theatre, and lodged on the steps of the Open Air Theatre document his friends, lovers, family, and significant life events. From his time in Montreal, where he was an active part of the gay liberation movement, his move to New York and London, and to India in the ‘80s where he documented  people who lived secret lives, and his battle with HIV/AIDS in the ‘90s, all make way into this rather vast display.  

While you are at the Museum premises, walk by the National Art Gallery, to catch What Makes Me Click, a compendium of photographs clicked by children from around the world laid out like a play area replete with poles to hang from, curated by Children’s Photography Archive in UK, and CPB.  

@Government Museum, Egmore. On till March 16.      

An Enduring Legacy: Lalit Mohan Sen: