Amongst the brouhaha created by the Indian Art Fair with much speculation about the total sales, revival of the art market, the slump in prices of top selling artists and the plight of galleries, some important shows may have slipped the notice of viewers.

One such exhibition is Multiple Encounters 2 at Lalit Kala Akademi that gathered together prints of 127 artists from India and America. The curators, such as Kavita Nayar, Sushanto Guha, Anandmoy Banerjee, Dattaraye Apte and Nicholas Hill from both the Indian and American sides are committed artists wanting to create awareness on prints and printmaking. This eliminates the commercial agenda of the galleries and the over intellectualisation by professional curators, leaving the selection of what the practitioners themselves consider the best amongst the fraternity. Thus one can see works of veterans such as Somnath Hore, Anupam Sud and Jagmohan Chopra alongwith members of the erstwhile Indian Printmakers Guild. It is as if the history of Indian printmaking unfolds through the show.

Through this effort, the curators and indeed the participating artists, seek to interrogate the future of conventional printmaking in the era of digital imaging and the Internet. One can see the range of printmaking in the painstaking and detailed aquatint rendering of the Grand Central Station or the New York skyline by Fredrick Mershimer to the portrayal of popular African American figures by Larry Collins.

The central idea seems to be to focused on creating a space and awareness for prints: be it serigraphs, lithographs, woodcuts, linocuts, aquatints and etchings, as legitimate and original art amongst the middle class. A class that wants to own an original piece but does not understand the concept that a print is as original as a canvas or a watercolour, and far more affordable.

— Dr Seema Bawa is an art historian, curator and critic