Jitish Kallat

Jitish Kallat was born in Mumbai in 1974, the city where he continues to live and work. The artist’s vast oeuvre spans painting, photography, drawing, video and sculptural installations, revealing a constant engagement with ideas of time, sustenance, recursion and historical recall.

His works traverse varying focal lengths and time-scales; from close details of the skin of a fruit or the brimming shirt-pocket of a passerby. Some works might be meditations on the transient present while others reach back into history and overlay the past onto the present through citations of momentous historical utterances.

Kallat has exhibited widely at museums and institutions across the world including representing India at the Venice Biennale this year, with his installation ‘Covering Letter’. Additionally, in 2017 the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi) presented a major mid-career survey of his work and in 2014, Kallat was the curator and artistic director of Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Art Dubai Portraits is a film series that provides a short perspective into the lives and workspaces of artists that are connected to the fair through its programming or participating galleries. The Art Dubai Portraits are produced in collaboration with Forward James Filmmakers.