‘Hybrid art shows will be popular in the future’

Not just in workplaces, hybrid culture is visible in music concerts and dance performances as well. In the last few months, the art field has also embraced the hybrid culture. Art enthusiasts got to see many virtual and offline shows (in galleries). 

Artist Parvathi Nayar says that many artists have adopted a hybrid work culture. 

“There is a fundamental way in which the arts community has changed – which is the inclusion of the digital in creating, presenting and talking about art through webinars and online talks. 

Many of us have adopted the hybrid work culture – working both from home and office (the studio). I guess it has also entered as a subject matter – in my case, a short story that I wrote about the lockdown called Rattrap was picked by the Singapore-based literary magazine Kitaab for their The Best Asian Short Stories 2021 collection. 

Digital art exhibitions, virtual art spaces, digital art forms, and especially, video art found their niche in the lockdown, which is great,” says Parvathi Nayar. Though her work Chicken Run is mostly online, there’s also a physical screening of the videos at Goethe-Institut.

Sarala Banerjee, the founder of Artworld Sarala’s Art Centre, tells DT Next that hybrid is the way forward. “We send out catalogs for those who wanted to watch our shows online. Apart from that, we also do live shows at our gallery in the city. Physical art shows will always have their charm - when the viewers gets to meet artists in person, they will understand more about the artwork. But things are changing now, the new generation of artists and audiences prefer virtual shows. They are tech-savvy and can easily adapt to changes,” says Sarala. The gallerist adds that the virtual platform gives more visibility to new and upcoming artists.