Kasauli Art Centre 1976–1991
Belinder Dhanoa
May 2023 • 7.5 x 9.5 inches • 456 pages
This book on the Kasauli Art Centre, located at Ivy Lodge, Kasauli – which functioned as a centre for the arts and was actively engaged in numerous art activities for a decade and a half, from 1976 to 1991 – contextualizes and examines those events within the broader framework of the cultural scene in India, but through the particularity of what took place at Kasauli. Workshops, and developments in the field of the visual arts, experiments in performance, seminars and discussions on arts and culture, the inception of the Journal of Arts & Ideas – these are among the subjects covered in the book. The text is written in brief chapters and in several registers, and uses devices from fiction writing, including the mediating of time between an event and its recall. The book also contains several valuable contributions from artists and scholars who participated in the events held at Kasauli. It is richly illustrated with photographs and other images from those times.
Belinder Dhanoa is a writer and artist. She has an MFA in Art Criticism from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda, and an MA in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester, New York. She currently teaches Creative Writing at the School of Culture and Creative Expression, Ambedkar University, Delhi.