Anuradha Venkataraman

Anuradha Venkataraman is a Bangalore-based Bharatanatyam dancer and an actor. Supported by this grant, Anuradha seeks to create a performance that engages with the psychological, sociological and political understandings of war and its diverse representations within the museum space. The artifacts in Bangalore’s Government Museum talk about the idea of war in multiple ways, revealing many emotions and stories buried under layers of time. Yet, to the visitors of the museum, the pieces are just a representation of a bygone, frozen space and time and carry no contemporary relevance, Anuradha feels. Therefore, the performance she will create is her ruminations on war in contemporary times.

For this exploration, Anuradha has chosen specific artifacts located in the four directions of the museum. These are the Begur hero stone, Tipu Sultan’s canon, a gun from World War I and a sculpture called ‘procession of war’ from the Vijayanagara period. With these pegs, Anuradha will weave their stories together and explore performatively the connection that each of these artifacts have had with the city of Bangalore.  

This grant is part of Project 560, 2015, which was made possible with support from Citi India.