N. S. Harsha

    N.S. Harsha was born in 1969, lives and works in Mysore, India. He is a recipient of the prestigious DAAD Scholarship in 2012, and was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2008.
    Recent solo exhibitions and projects： Mori Art Museum (Tokyo，2017)，the Dallas Museum of Art (2015–2016)，DAAD, as part of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2012–2013)，INIVA ( London，2009)，and Maison Hermes (Tokyo，2008).
    Group exhibitions: the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (India, 2014), Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (2013),Dojima Biennial(Osaka,2013), Adelaide International Biennial (2012),Asian Art Museum(San Francisco,2012), the Yokohama Triennial (2011) and the Bienal de Sao Paulo (2010).
    Major touring exhibition: Indian Highway, which was staged at the Serpentine Gallery (London,2008); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art( Oslo, 2009); Herning Art Museum (Denmark,2010); Musée d'Art Contemporain(Lyon,2011); MAXXI (Rome， 2011–2012). A new work by NS Harsha recently featured in the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018) and was included in a major solo exhibition NS Harhsa: Facing at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery( Swansea，2018).
    Current exhibitions：NS Harsha: Gathering Delights (CHAT，Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile，Hong Kong，until 3 November 2019).

Nations

Acrylic on Canvas, threads, sewing machines

Variable size

2007

Flags have a long history and are thought to have been invented several thousand years ago in India or China. Their initial purpose is simple - bearing messages through decorative design. However without being a vexillologist (one who studies flags), their complexity clearly lies in how they are used and what they convey. Over the years they have provided an important means of communication, including that of assisting with military co-ordination on both land and sea. Today flags continue to be symbolic as well as emotive.
N. S. Harsha’s physically impressive installation uses this history and power of the flag to the full. With a hundred and ninety two draped over a similar number of treadle sewing machines, Nations symbolises the number of countries that make up the membership of the United Nations.
Seeing so many flags together we are quickly reminded that they often refer to the physical and political histories of countries and Nations Their designs make geometric and colour reference to how a country was created or ceded from another. Certain elements of design reoccur in countries that are geographically connected or aligned in some way. Harsha’s installation provides an unusual opportunity, to trace these real and symbolic links.
So Nations, in both title and form, illustrates the connections and allegiances between places. Harsha’s physical use of thread criss-crossing between machines is an apt metaphor for the spider’s web of entanglement that exists, affecting how countries form relationships and operate. Flags become official forms of identity, are used as proud emblems, as marketing tools, almost as logos. Here each has been researched and then hand painted onto simple calico. The positioning of each amidst its neighbours has been considered.
Harsha as an artist tends towards the optimistic. In his paintings, his installations and his compelling community projects, he is concerned with who we are as individuals, how we make sense of the world. He is a skilled story teller, mixing everyday life with imagination and the surreal. His discussion of globalisation, migrant labour and the ‘smallness’ of man in Nations is part of his on-going concern for the human condition. Throughout his work he combines everyday activities and the minutiae of life with the bigger issues, world events and cultural change. He draws from life around him in Mysore, India and from the artistic traditions of his own culture but relates these to other worlds he now experiences as an international artist. All is infused with respectful comment and often wry humour.
Harsha’s Nations combines the realisation of this with the absurdity of it. Just as the individual is seen as pre-eminent in his work, each human unique with aspiration and capability, so too we are bound to lose our sense of identity when seen en masse. The serried rows of machines are as symbolic as the flags. N. S. Harsha is an image maker who encourages us to reflect on the world around us. The way he presents it as well as its wider meaning and significance are fused to become universally understandable.Tessa Jackson
Director Iniva London

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