NS Harsha is a contemporary artist working with painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, and public works. His work is concerned with the tensions between the local and global, the traditional and contemporary, and the individual and collective.
Harsha has contributed to Iniva’s programme through the exhibition ‘Drawing Space: Contemporary Indian Drawing’ which focused on the use of the drawn line as a device for negotiating space in ways that are self-empowering, exploring the complexity of making and exhibiting work in an increasingly global context. The exhibition was co-produced by Iniva and Beaconsfield, in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum (2000). His work ‘Nations’ was first shown in Europe in 2009 at Iniva, which housed 192 sewing machines referring to the United Nations and globalisation. In response to ‘Nations’, Dr Christine Checinska, Professor Janis Jefferies and Professor Angela McRobbie explored the wider issues around migration, the use of cheap labour, the marginalisation of individual freedom within the global market economy and the use of cloth as a cultural symbol and political tool during the 2009 panel discussion. The exhibition, alongside his previous works, were also discussed during a talk with Harsha and Tessa Jackson, the curator of ‘Nations’, in 2009.
His works have been show internationally including the 21st Biennale of Sydney, Austalia (2018), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2017), Victoria Miro, London (2015), Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2014), II Capricorno, Venice (2013), 5th Moscow Biennale, Russia (2013), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2013), amongst others.
He was the recipient of the prestigious DAAD Scholarship in 2012, and was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2008. He obtained his BFA in Painting from Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts, Mysore in 1992 and an MFA in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda in 1995.
He lives and works in Mysore, India.