Gauri Gill
Photo: courtesy of the artist
Gauri Gill
India born 1970
Level 1
NGV International
View on map
PROJECT
A central principle in Gauri Gill’s practice is collaborative partnerships as a way to blur the line between photographer and subject. Since 2014, she has worked with the renowned mask-makers of the Maharashtra region of India and her subjects to create a collaborative project. The people in Gill’s photographs wear masks, of their own design, as they engage in everyday village activities. Gill navigates the ethics of representation by inviting her subjects to participate in the creation of their own photographic likeness. The masks they don both allow them creative expression of a contemporary language of symbols, while obscuring their individual identities from exploitation.
ABOUT
Gauri Gill invites the subjects of her photographs to collaborate with her in creating their portraits, and in doing so, navigates the sometimes complex ethics of representing others. Gauri Gill earned a BFA from the College of Art, New Delhi; a BFA from Parsons School of Design, the New School, New York; and an MFA from Stanford University, California. She has exhibited within India and internationally, including the 58th Venice Biennale; MoMA PS1, New York; Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; the Kochi Biennale 2016; and the 7th Moscow Biennale. Her work is held in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. In 2011 she was awarded the Grange Prize, Canada’s foremost award for photography. In 2022 her first major survey exhibition opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art at Humlebæk, Denmark, in 2023.
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Gift of James Cohan Gallery and the artist, 2023