Thukral and Tagra:

Jiten Thukral was born in 1976 and received a BFA from Chandigarh College of Art and his MFA from the Delhi College of Art.

Sumir Tagra was born in 1979 and received a BFA from the Delhi College of Art and later studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad.

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra work collaboratively with a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installations, interactive games, video, performance and design. Thukral & Tagra work on new formats of public engagement and attempt to expand the scope of what art can do. They break out of the mediated and disciplinary world and create multi-modal sensory and immersive environments. Their earlier work dealt with tropes of migration and motifs of a globally manifested consumer culture. It questioned the provenance of Indian identity and its various articulations. Their recent work has dealt with the interpretation of Indian mythological narratives and symbols in ways that renew and enliven a largely pedantic and static area of cultural material.

From a pop visual character to a predominantly abstract visual approach and compositional philosophy, Thukral & Tagra constantly shift in terms of their grammar and vocabulary. The abstract suggests an everyday experience of architecture and urban design in Gurgaon (Haryana, India) and Chandigarh (Punjab, India) is embedded in their visual language. They have offered socio political commentary that is implicit in their aesthetic for the past fifteen years.