The Business Standard‘s Kishore Singh profiles Thukral and Tagra, or T&T, Punjabi artists who emerged from Ogilvy advertising to become international art sensations over the course of a decade. Singh visits their studio:
Inside, Sellotaped on a wall, is a printout of an email: “The following works have to be packed & crated at T&T studios next week. 1. Two paintings going to Sao Paulo (one crate). 2. Two paintings going to Max Wigram, London for Frieze Art Fair (one crate). 3. Cabinet sculptures going to Mumbai (multiple).” Tagra […] is insisting that the two artists, who work as the collective T&T, are this year broke because they have been working only on museum projects for Tokyo, Singapore, Brisbane and, coming up next, Sao Paolo. […]
In a sense the transition from advertising’s Jiten & Sumir to artists T&T occurred when New Delhi gallery Nature Morte gave them space for a show of T-shirts, which they turned into an art event, and then followed it up with their first show of art. This was in 2005, and since then Thukral and Tagra, whose first painting, Skin 1, sold for Rs 80,000, have consistently moved on, despite the meltdown, to occupy a slot in the Rs 25-30 lakh bracket for a work 5’x5’ in size. It has included projects they have undertaken in the area of HIV/AIDS, creating art, installations, underwear and even flip-flops that endorse their message of safe sex, but blurs the distance between art and design. They have shown at Art Basel in Switzerland, turned regular at New York’s Bose Pacia (which has an arrangement with Nature Morte), and participated at exhibitions from Berlin, Sydney, Durban, Seoul and Milan to Vienna, Taipei, Vancouver and Shanghai
Just Kidding (Business Standard)
