The Portrait | FICA Master Class with Gauri Gill

November 16th, 17th, 19th, 20th and 23rd | 4 pm - 7 pm

This November in our Master Class Workshop Series, FICA invites you to register for an exciting workshop, which will be conducted by Gauri Gill. The workshop be held at D-42, Defence Colony, FICA Reading Room.

The workshop is structured around ideas of identity and representation as framed by the 'portrait'. It observes historical and contemporary approaches to portraiture existing within various contexts we may encounter, both amateur and professional - including family albums, snapshots and social media, studio photography, the media, documentary and fictional film, advertising and artistic practice - within India and elsewhere.  It will begin with a presentation of the artist's own practice and traverse a broad selection of artists and images, from the making of self portraits and autobiographical narratives to broader social observation 'on the street' or in public places, and onto the engaging of worlds not one's own.

The course will encompass different strategies and constructs in addition to the purely documentary approach - working with found material, cinematic, diaristic and other alternate ways of storytelling, as well as staged or constructed photography; it will also look at photographic tools and processes that are intrinsic to the forming of content.

*Invite/Poster Image Title: Jannat, Barmer. From the series Notes from the Desert. Image Courtesy: Gauri Gill

About the facilitator

Gauri Gill earned a BFA in Applied Art from Delhi College of Art in India, a BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in NYC, and an MFA in Art from Stanford University in California. She has been exhibiting within India and internationally since the early 2000s and has participated in museum shows across the world. Her book 'Balika Mela' was published by Edition Patrick Frey in 2012. Gill's work is in the collections of prominent Indian and North American institutions, and in 2011 she was awarded the Grange Prize, Canada’s foremost award for photography. She has held photography workshops at various institutions including Urmul Setu Sansthan, Lunkaransar; NID, Ahmedabad and Ambedkar University, New Delhi.

The FICA Master Class is a series designed for young artists who are looking to closely engage with an experienced practitioner through a set of workshops that explores his/her practice. These intensive learning modules focus on innovative approaches to diverse mediums and materials. They open up possibilities of conceptualizing and making through the process of research, reading, exploring material/mediums, collaboration and exchange. Each class has been designed around the practice of the artist who conducts the session and provides triggers to young practitioners to experiment and explore. The Master Class series will be held on a monthly basis between May and August 2015. 

The workshops will generally be week-long sessions, with 3-4 hours classes. Classes include both practice and theory. Basic materials for the classes will be provided. Participants will need to bring their own laptops/cameras as required.

The Master Class is part of FICA's larger educational programming. FICA’s educational outreach focuses primarily on two questions – how do we use the art resources that are available in a gallery/museum/library to engage better with the audience; and how can we use art education as an important cultural tool that can extend itself to everyday life? Each programme is thus tailored for a particular audience, developed in collaboration with practicing professionals, and creates a space for exchange and deeper engagement with the subject in hand. Participants are invited to share their work and open themselves to constructive feedback from their peer group. For any queries write to us at info@ficart.org