Biographical Statement

Jagrut Raval (b. 1986, Ahmedabad, India) is a visual artist with interdisciplinary art practice that spans diverse mediums at various scales, presented in the form of installations, alternative photographic printing techniques, videos, drawings, and appropriation of found and mass-produced items. Inquiries into the notion of time as experience and its relationship to the human condition, Raval’s works critique established truths by investigating, challenging, and subverting perceptions about collective memory in the public sphere — and its manifestation in architecture. Raval’s interests lies in visual-spatial storytelling Raval has exhibited internationally at venues including SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Made in Balmoral Showroom, Bad Ems, Germany; Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Delhi and Kolkata, India; Medrar Contemporary Art, Cairo, Egypt; Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, India. He is the recipient of various fellowships and residencies, such as Five Million Incidents - Goethe Institute; Shergill Sundaram Foundation; Serendipity Arts Foundation; Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral Fellowship-University of Mainz, Germany, and the Crystal Ruth Bell Residency Award, Beijing, China.

RAVAL’S PROJECT:

Prologue:

Sometime around 1643, a strange traveller from the East used to walk the streets of New Amsterdam. The Dutch East India company had several travellers coming from their colonies from India in 17th century. A mysterious man named Narad had arrived in the Americas. He was an elusive explorer, an alchemist, a naturalist and a polymath who travelled the world in search of the elixir of life in 17th century. There are accounts of the events unfolding at the time in New York City documented in Narad’s Book of Americas. He recorded the lifestyle of the Munsee Lenape people residing in the land occupied by Dutch settlers and the gruesome acts of violence laid upon the people of the land. Narad’s search for the elixir of life and the interactions with Lenape people about immortality is preserved in a series of drawings as part of the Book Of Americas.

Elucidation:

During my time at the residency for 6 weeks, I plan to make drawings on handmade paper layering maps from 17th century New York juxtaposing Lenape iconography with Indian-Hindu symbols. The drawings will mimic the look and feel of the old manuscripts from the Hindu religious texts from 17th century in Indian Subcontinent. And layering them with Lenape iconography and the maps of New York. I envision 12-15 drawings of 18X12 inches as part of a series from the Book Of Americas by Narad, and short video about Narad in Americas. I am interested in putting together religious iconography from two different cultures on two sides of the continent in 17th century. The drawings will respond to the complexity of the term INDIAN used both, as a person from India, or a native person from the Americas. The drawings will seem like a dissonance in time fused together to form an alternative history.