Artist Spotlight: Amar Kanwar

Artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar has spent his career chronicling India’s political shifts and the dramatic changes to its landscape, focusing especially on those most vulnerable to the effects. Kanwar’s series The Sovereign Forest focuses on the state of Odisha in East India, a locus of conflict, power grabs, and major development. This program features two core films from his multimedia installation work: The Scene of Crime (2011, 42 min), composed of a series of visual “maps” that document the landscape of Odisha in minute detail, serving as a memorial to the local land and lives lost to industrialization; and A Love Story (2010, 6 min), a tender love letter to the region’s lost landscape. Kanwar will discuss his films following the screening. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.