With the key goal of informing, educating and inspiring the public through art, she acquires, cares for, develops, displays and interprets collections of artefacts or works of art. “After spending 32 long years in this field, my challenge today is to grasp as to where am I going. I am not bored yet as the trends keep changing. The test lies in how you keep up with life. In art, one has to adapt. How do I bring the younger lot to adapt; that’s what I am battling now,” says Sharan Apparao, the well-known founder curator of Chennai-based Apparao Galleries.
For someone with a royal lineage of Nuzvid zamindars, Sharan is starkly unassuming. “My ancestors moved to Chennai in 1930s and now I shuttle between Chennai and Delhi. I have never had to come this side all these years. My only connection with Nuzvid for many years, even after we left this place, was the truckloads of fresh ripened world famous Nuzvid mangoes that the workers would bring home from our orchards here. Come summer every year and our entire house would smell of ripened mangoes that would be distributed to our extended family and friends in Chennai,” she recalls.
Did she love art so much that she chose to be a curator? “Serendipity”, she says with a smile, has put me on this path. “We are all curators in our everyday lives. I slot everything I see around me. Even while I am talking to you, I am on the job.”
Even while building her own personal collection back home in Chennai, Sharan has been following artists and helping them lay bare their talent in a most promising way through shows she puts together for them to stimulate creative minds across the globe.
A rare blend of passion, curiosity and acumen, the ‘custodian’ of art speaks avidly about the alchemy of good curating. “Sometimes placing one work of art near another makes one and one equal to three; Two artworks arranged alchemically leave each intact, transform both and create a third thing. Take for instance Mona Hatoum, the Lebanese-born installation artist who relies on the kind of interactivity that lets the spectator become involved in the aesthetic experience without the presence of the artist.”
Sharan is trying to expand the notion of curating. “Exhibitions need not only take place in galleries and need not only involve displaying objects. Art can appear where we expect it least.”
She speaks enthusiastically about an outreach programme she has designed involving art education for young and adults. “We have such a fantastic history which we are not exploring. As part of this programme, we have experts delivering lectures but I am struggling to get artists to attend these sessions. It is because many of them think they know everything. It’s about time artists moved beyond art and do ideas.” Dealing with egos, she admits, is a big challenge.
Speaking at length about the arts of South India, the Epics and how they have affected aesthetics, she says the history of Tamil Nadu has retained the Tamil culture whereas in Andhra, a lot of it got disintegrated.
Ask her what next she says: “The journey has been a learning experience. How do I institutionalise what I have done all these years is the moot question that dominates my mind. I don’t have an answer at the moment,” she says.
Push the boundaries
The Government has not understood the importance of art and culture which are often taken for granted. India has great culture and we need to bring it out in the global arena. We really need to play on the treasure trove of our rich heritage. The new state of Andhra Pradesh should create platforms for philosophers and thinkers to get together with artists. Because it is a new State, it should do an avantgarde to grab world attention.
