14—30 November 2008 / De Balie Amsterdam

India Express
Between 12 and 30 November, the Amsterdam India Festival (AIF) takes place. Within this festival, De Balie will curate a versatile program: India Express. On invitation by De Balie, Fw: arranges an exhibition, showing works by Cuny Janssen, Martine Stig and Vanessa van Dam, Joyce Vlaming and WassinkLundgren. In her first book ‘India’ (2002), Cuny Janssen shows portraits of Indian children. According to her, children represent the pure origin of each human being. In ‘Any resemblance to Existing Persons is Purely Coincidental (Stories of Mr. Wood)’ (2006) Martine Stig and Vanessa van Dam are searching for Mr. Wood. They show us reality as a construction and through that, they question the functional reality and narrative structure of motion pictures. In ‘India Now’, Joyce Vlaming questions the position of young, highly educated Indians of her own generation, in the rapidly changing city landscape of India, that is under strong influence of new economic development. Only after looking closer and after details of separate pictures are connected, the series that WassinkLundgren made of guards in Bolleywood film sets (2007) show us what exactly they are guarding.