MUMBAI: What is art? It’s a simple question for women who have not just grown up with great art, but also nurtured it. Turns out, it isn’t so, perhaps for the very same reasons.
It was the only question art gallerists and mother, daughter Shireen Gandhy, 61, and Atyaan Jungawala, 31, paused before answering. They attempted with a few incomplete sentences and even tried to work together to come up with an answer. It can be hard to define something so intrinsic to one’s life, like asking a little child to write about her mother.
That was why Atyaan, the granddaughter of Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy, founders of the 61-year-old art gallery Chemould Prescott Road (earlier Chemould), thought of art as “whatever” while growing up. “I often asked myself – what was all this around me,” says Atyaan.
We are at the iconic Kekee Manzil, in Bandra, her grandparents Kekoo and Khorshed’s home built in 1921, where art really is all around, even in the washrooms. Legends such as M F Husain, Tyeb Mehta and others have frequented the home for work, to hang out and discuss art when they were young. The house is widely considered the place where modern Indian art was shaped.
Finding purpose
Both Shireen and later Atyaan grew up there. Shireen, too, when young, took her parents’ work for granted. But she studied art and trained to work in the gallery, nevertheless. Atyaan, though, is trained to be an interior designer. She worked with an architect for some time, then organised protests against the Coastal Road, and started and managed the anti-movement’s social media page. “I did it wholeheartedly,” says Atyaan. “It gave her a sense of purpose, that she was doing something for the city,” says Shireen.
But around 2018, she found herself “floundering”. At the time Shireen introduced a new art management software in her gallery but the people she hired failed to impress her. “If a picture is uploaded, it must be perfect. They were just not doing it well,” she recalls. That’s when Atyaan stepped up. But her internship was interrupted by Covid-19. At the time Shireen became more hands-on with online work for the gallery, taking over the space as she does at the gallery.
And that’s the difference between her and Atyaan’s entry into their family’s 61-year legacy of shaping Indian modern and contemporary art. When Shireen started, her parents were older and slowly retracting from the space. “But I am not ready to give up. My parents had hundreds of other interests. My focus is art, and I am being more and more entrenched, so it was difficult for Atyaan to step in,” says Shireen.
Atyaan responds: “I didn’t know how to figure out my own place there. I didn’t have a voice. Everything was set, and my mom’s established artists were not going to take a child seriously.”
A bright idea
That’s when the idea of working with younger artists came up again. It was discussed earlier as well, but never acted upon. But this time Shireen suggested that Atyaan and her colleague, Sunaina Kewalramani, consider using their guest house in Colaba as a place for art. The furniture was moved out, appropriate lighting installed, and thus was born Chemould CoLab, a space for younger artists, collectors, curators and writers. Atyaan scouted for new talents and showcased their work here like a residency. “Initially, I would run every portfolio of artists with mom,” says Atyaan. But now, after running the space for over three years, she is more sure of her finds. “I see the show straight away and that is a nice surprise,” says Shireen.
Atyaan has thus far launched Jayeeta Chatterjee, Shailee Mehta, Vinita Mungi, Ahalya Rajendran, Umesh S, Gurjeet Singh, Kuldeep Singh, Kalpana Vishwas and others through CoLab. She found them on Instagram at artist residencies and through people’s recommendations. “I now easily recognise the red and the green flags in artists,” she says. The work that she once felt was “whatever” now defines who she is.
“Atyaan’s work not only fills me with pride but also gives me a sense of relief as well,” says Shireen. As a gallerist, it’s one’s job to look for newer artists and promote them, but it can be time-consuming. And Shireen has already been working with some of the most sought-after names in the art world – Atul and Anju Dodiya, Jitish and Reena Kallat, Shilpa Gupta, Vivan Sundaram, Shakuntala Kulkarni and others. “So, this is a joyous, quick trick. Someone else is doing the work, curating a gallery programme, and taking care of the bachaas because they have to be taken care of.”
Legacy, however, comes with its own burdens. But according to Atyaan, “It has its ups and downs, and teaches you what to do and what not to do.”
She never involves her artists in exhibition installations and meets them over video calls to check the progress of their work. Shireen however is known to consult her artists even when planning an art fair stall, and often lets them work at their own pace. “That’s one of the things we fight about – how we work with our artists. Also, I am empathetic and soft, and Atyaan is more cut and dry and practical,” she says.
Art will continue to be nurtured in Kekee Manzil, because it is way more than just business. “It is a record of its time. From just the decorative, aesthetic side of it, I am slowly moving towards appreciating its stories,” says Atyaan. For Shireen, art is “the way artists look at it, the way they express what they see and how they show it to the viewers”.