Rituparna Sengupta inaugurates Harshit Agrawal’s solo exhibition at Kolkata's Emami Art

The project has been manifested by Engendred, a transnational arts and human rights organization and is in collaboration with 64/1.

Actress Rituparna Sengupta, filmmaker Ranjan K Ghosh and artist-writerKarthik Kalyanaraman were present at the inauguration.

Harshit Agrawal is a noted artist developing the genre of AI Art.  He has worked with AI art since its inception in 2015; his work has been nominated twice for the top tech art prize, the ‘Lumen’, and he was the only Indian artist at the first global group exhibition of AI Art at a contemporary gallery in 2018.  

Speaking on the occasion, Agrawal said, “By working extensively with AI algorithms and datasets, and often creating them as an essential part of my practice, I want to consciously engage with our inevitable techno-centric reality, than being simply sucked into it."

"Ai’s usage in art elevates it from being simply a tool for execution – it influences the outputs more heavily by its estrangement of the dataset it learns from (under the direction and instrumentation of the human artist). I find this space of engagement with the machine fascinating to work with," he said.

Another trajectory for this show will be an unflinching look into the state of Artificial Intelligence today and the uncomfortable yet terribly relevant issues it confronts in today’s world.

Says Myna Mukherjee, Curator and Director, Engendered, “As a curator what strikes me most about Harshit’s work is that it consciously engages with this inevitable techno-centric reality we live in, rather than being simply sucked into it."

"AI’s usage in art elevates it from being a tool of utility and function to being a conspirator in the artist’s imagination, and the pursuit of aesthetic ideas. It allows us to witness how humans can work with machines to enhance their creativity, rather than allow their creativity to be replaced by mechanic labour," said she.

CEO of Emami Art, Richa Agarwal, said: “Emami Art, through its programming, is challenging art viewership. By constantly evolving with cutting edge technologies, we are positioned at the forefront of the changing face of contemporary art in India. By doing an exhibition on Artificial Intelligence, we are also tapping into the future."

The exhibition will be on Sept 11 to 30th, 11 am to 6 pm.