(b.1973)
Gigi Scaria was born in southern Kerala, India, in 1973. In 1995, after completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, Scaria moved to New Delhi where he undertook a Master of Fine Arts at Jamia Millia University. Moving from Kerala to New Delhi was a significant experience that in turn influenced Scaria’s creative work. He began to make art reflecting the impact of city life. He worked with mapping, abstract forms and narrative painting, later focussing on the mapping of the ‘city’ itself.
In 2002, Scaria was awarded an Inlaks Scholarship, and was artist-in-residence at UNIDEE, Cittadellarte -Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, Italy.
Scaria’s creative repertoire includes a range of media such as digital art and video, photography, installation, sculpture and painting.
In 2011, Scaria was one of five artists to represent India at the 54th Venice Biennale in the exhibition Everyone agrees: it’s about to explode, curated by Ranjit Hoskote. In Elevator from the sub-continent (2011), an installation made for the biennale, Scaria created a simulated space representing an actual elevator that the audience was invited to step inside in order to ‘time travel’ to different interior spaces in different households in India. Inside, projected video animation on the walls of the ‘elevator’ created the sensation of moving underground through a range of living interiors representing social metaphors.
He is interested in the quality of social space in a drastically changing urban environment, with concomitant implications on psychological experience. Since 2000, Scaria has exhibited widely in India, and has participated in major exhibitions and residency programs internationally including in Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Korea, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the USA.
Work represented in major curated exhibitions and biennales in India and internationally, including Venice, Singapore, Kochi-Muziris Biennales; Smart Museum, Chicago; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Kunstverein Frankfurt; Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; Kunsthaus Bern; Fredric Jameson Gallery, Duke University and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel. Work also exhibited in curated exhibitions at National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai), Jawahar Kala Kendra (Jaipur) and Lalit Kala Akademi (Chennai and New Delhi).
Artist is based in Delhi.