Post-colonial Renaissance: ‘Indianness’, contemporary art and the market in the age of neoliberal capital

Arjun Appadurai has argued that ‘the materiality of objects in India is not yet completely penetrated by the logic of the market’.1 However, the entry and the visibility of modern and contemporary Indian art into the circuits of the global art world increasingly challenge this argument. The story of modern and contemporary Indian art is one of the inscription of local objects and their ‘Indianness’ into the above circuits, with market value being created inthe process. If the globalisation of the art world provides a conceptual and material arena where objects are circulated, displayed and bought and sold through auction houses, exhibitions, biennales and art fairs, this article analyses an event that epitomises some of the forces at play in this arena: the contemporary art exhibition ‘The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today’ held in 2010 at the Saatchi Gallery, London. An artistic cum business instantiation of ‘India in Europe’—and one that challenges the visual and aesthetic canons ‘traditionally’ associated with India—this article examines this exhibition as anentry point into the analysis of how neoliberal capital produces ‘culture’, and into the tension between the commodity form and the infinite possibilities, and unintended consequences, opened up by this very status.