Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how Indian contemporary artists articulate and uphold artistic autonomy as an ideal, and how they do so in relation to two domains commonly understood to undermine artistic autonomy in the Indian context: the art market and public institutions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how contemporary artists based in Mumbai, India, understand and articulate autonomy in relation to their artistic practice and professional identities. In India, the production of contemporary art is commonly understood as being heavily market-driven, and primarily unfolding within the private sector, among private commercial galleries, collectors, and privately-run art initiatives. This trend has grown since the 1990s, and expanded rapidly in the 2000s, during a period of accelerated art market growth, and a parallel rise in international and national attention given to Indian art. While these shifts are often described by artists (and dealers, curators, and other art professionals) as bringing new and long-awaited visibility to Indian art, they are simultaneously articulated as perennial challenges that undermine artistic autonomy. This paper will consider how artists articulate artistic autonomy in relation to both the art market and public institutions and state support. Many artists uphold ideals of artistic autonomy, where they imagine art as a domain that should be free of external political, economic, or material intervention or pressure, where one might engage, for instance, in social and political critique. They posit the market and public institutions as alternately undercutting this autonomy and as relatively insignificant for artists' production of cutting-edge Indian contemporary art. Nevertheless, this belies the reliance of artists on both of these domains from which they often discursively distance themselves.