Reena Saini Kallat

Reena Saini Kallat’s (b. 1973) practice spanning drawing, photography, sculpture and video is concerned with ideas that hold each other in tension—barriers in a world of mobility, porosity in sites of fissure, memorialisation in the aftermath of amnesia, and the promise and illegibility of national legal documents.

Since she graduated in Fine Art from the Sir JJ School of Art in 1996, Kallat has contemplated Partition, an event that impacted her family members who were displaced from Lahore. Lines of Control are a recurring motif in her works. In her photo-piece, Crease/ Crevice/ Contour (2008), the form of disputed territories appear as wounds on people’s backs.Her drawings, Leaking Lines (2019) highlight the ‘line’ as a formal artistic device that seems innocuous on paper but has dreadful implications in real life.

Her work is widely exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich; Tate Modern, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; SITE SantaFe, New Mexico; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Saatchi Gallery, London; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan; ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe; Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba; SESC Pompeia and SESC Belenzinho in Sao Paulo; IVAM Museum, Spain; Göteborgs Konsthall, Sweden; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; MOCA, Shanghai; Busan MOMA; Chicago Cultural Centre amongst several others.

Her solo exhibitions at Museums include the National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet, Paris (2020); the Manchester Museum (2017), Offsite, Vancouver Art Gallery (2015), Bhau Daji Lad Museum (2013), Kennedy Centre (2011). She has participated at the Bangkok Art Biennale (2020); Havana Biennial (2019); Busan Biennale (2016), Goteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2011), the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale (2011), the Asian Art Biennale, Taiwan (2009) besides others.

Her works are part of several public and private collections including Musee de Beaux Arts, Ottawa; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Manchester Museum, UK; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Norrtalje Konsthall, Sweden; Initial Access (Frank Cohen Collection), UK; Pizzuti Collection, Ohio; Burger Collection, Hongkong; Fondazione Golinelli, Italy; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi amongst others.