The Jaipur Center for Art opens its doors to local culture and global contemporary art

The Jaipur Center for Art (JCA), founded by HH Sawai Padmanabh Singh (Pacho) and Noelle Kadar, opened on 22 November 2024. Located within the iconic City Palace of Jaipur, the 2,600 sq. ft. public exhibition space aims to spotlight Jaipur’s cultural heritage while integrating it into global contemporary art conversations.

In his work Ways of Seeing, John Berger states, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled,” beautifully expanding the opportunities that lie in the state of being unsettled. A sentiment expanded upon by Jacques Lacan, who ties perception to desire, unconscious thought, and societal constructs. A function of time formulated for both, constance and variance. A New Way of Seeing, curated by Peter Nagy is the inaugural exhibition at the JCA and explores these unsettled realms through works by Indian and international artists that probe the ways we perceive and make sense of art, and through it, the shifting contours of the present moment.

Among the artists are Hiroshi Sugimoto whose Theatres and Seascapes reimagines the interplay of time and space. Black and white photographs show films projected in empty theaters dissolve into glowing white screens framed by opulent interiors, and others reduce ocean horizons to stark yet meditative black-and-white compositions. Dayanita Singh’s Time Measures, comprising red muslin bundles photographed over time, interrogates memory and temporal rhythms, while her Archivologies I, II, and III evoke hidden histories in mysterious paper-like forms.

Alicja Kwade’s Transformator, a bronze-cast tree branch fused with a mirror ball, and Rain, gold watch hands floating like flecks of time, distort our grasp of materiality and logic. Sean Scully’s luminous Quintana Roo Wall uses abstract geometries and vivid hues to evoke emotion and memory. Tanya Goel’s Mechanism 21 blends pigments and natural materials to explore chaos and order, while her Botanicals reinterpret colonial herbarium traditions.

Anish Kapoor’s mirrored discs, Oriental Blue to Clear and Magenta to Clear, dissolve form into fleeting reflections, embodying illusion’s poetic truth. It distorts and discomforts our own reflection as we inch closer to its shiny surface, witnessing ourselves as we witness art. Finally, L.N. Tallur and Manjunath Kamath probe history through sculptural interventions, distorting traditional forms in works like Glitch Tandava and White Whispers over Shy Red Canvas.

Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh, drawing on his family’s legacy of artistic patronage, alongside Co-founder Noelle Kadar, a seasoned contemporary art expert, see JCA as a platform for fostering global artistic exchange, revealing the dynamics of tradition and the evolving language of the contemporary. With their exhibitions, artist residencies, programming, and public art, they aim to engage youth and ensure heritage spaces remain vibrant cultural landmarks while defining the present moment.

A New Way of Seeing is also an exercise in place-making. Here art engages with the textures of heritage, the undeniable presence of history sharpens our awareness of the present. This interplay of craft, architecture, and artistic expression positions Jaipur as a luminous point in the global discourse on culture, where tradition becomes a springboard for new interpretations of the contemporary. Seeing, rediscovering, and linking variances between past and present—a contemporary is shaped by the Pink City’s own rhythm of renewal.

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