Young Subcontinent Booklet 2016

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A draft catalogue produced for the Young Subcontinent 2016 that organized with the support of, and as a part of the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. Curator: Riyas Komu Curatorial Assistant: Anuj Daga Compilation & Book Design: Anuj Daga Serendipity Arts Festival 2016 took place from December 15-22 in Goa across several locations in Panjim.

Front Cover Image Credits: Saju Kunhan, Mumbai, India

serendipityartsfestival.com 2018

www.youngsubcontinent.blogspot.com

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Contents 5

Serendipity Arts Festival

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Curatorial Note

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YS 2016 Artist Works

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Residency & Adjunct Seminars

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Post Goa Postcard Project for Children of Goa

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Open Site Street Art Project

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Artist Biographies

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Acknowledgements

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Serendipity Arts Festival Serendipity Arts Foundation is an arts and cultural development foundation created to encourage and support the arts as a significant contributor to civil society. Serendipity Arts Foundation aims to promote new creative strategies, artistic interventions, and cultural partnerships which are responsive and seek to address the social, cultural and environmental milieu. Committed to innovation, Serendipity Arts Foundation intends to support, promote and create platforms for innovation and creativity providing the wider public with a unique cultural and historical source of modern contemporary art and culture. The Foundation programs are designed and initiated through innovative collaborations with partners across a multitude of fields, each intervention created using the arts to impact education, social initiatives, community development programmes, explore interdisciplinarity between the arts, and to better understand the shared histories of the sub-continent.

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Young Subcontinent: An Emotional Community Although the South Asian subcontinent constitutes just four percent of the world’s surface area, its landmass is home to one fourth of the entire world’s population. People have lived here since several millennia; life has accumulated over time by waves of inward and outward migrations, not necessarily peaceful. The “here” we are referring to, as seen today, is an aggregation of eight nation/states - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Maldives whose geographical as well as historical destinies were once forged by natural forces of the mountains and waters. To be sure, such forces have led to the pollination of several cultural commonalities amongst the entire subcontinent, however its recent political history has brought its nations into difficult equations with each other. The colonial encounter with South Asia has left the subcontinent scattered over political boundaries. Yet, the ancestral bonds embedded in the civilizational memory of these 1.6 billion people of diverse nationalities have not been completely ruffled. The contemporary cultural landscape of the South Asian subcontinent thus remains restive within the tension between its political and civilizational history.

In the predicament of cultural reconciliation after the colonial encounter, several shades of suspicion, insecurity, competition and essentialism have

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unfortunately crept into the young subcontinent. For example, the tyranny of maps have kept people guarded of each other, every contestation of official Although the South Asian subcontinent constitutes just four percent of the world’s surface area, its landmass is home to one fourth of the entire world’s population. People have lived here since several millennia; life has accumulated over time by waves of inward and outward migrations, not necessarily peaceful. The “here” we are referring to, as seen today, is an aggregation of eight nation/states - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Maldives whose geographical as well as historical destinies were once forged by natural forces of the mountains and waters. To be sure, such forces have led to the pollination of several cultural commonalities amongst the entire subcontinent, however its recent political history has brought its nations into difficult equations with each other. The colonial encounter with South Asia has left the subcontinent scattered over political boundaries. Yet, the ancestral bonds embedded in the civilizational memory of these 1.6 billion people of diverse nationalities have not been completely ruffled. The contemporary cultural landscape of the South Asian subcontinent thus remains restive within the tension between its political and civilizational history.

In the predicament of cultural reconciliation after the colonial encounter, several shades of suspicion, insecurity, competition and essentialism have

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unfortunately crept into the young subcontinent. For example, the tyranny of maps have kept people guarded of each other, every contestation of official history is read as seditious dissent, the diversity of language, ethnicity, faith, food, lifestyle instead of being celebrated, has become a cause for conflict. On the other hand, with two of the nation states – India and Pakistan - armed with nuclear weapons, there is a constant shadow of a mushroom cloud looming over its landscape. The Empire collapsed in 1947, but its imaginaries continue to dominate the mindscape of South Asia. One such imaginaries – that sought to imagine the entire subcontinent as a monoculture essentially as strategy to exploit and rule, has deeply affected the contemporary understanding of the subcontinent’s culture. Such notions that hold back people from appreciating synthesized diversity of the subcontinent need to be challenged. After all, the idea of Asia itself is an imported notion, which explains why few languages in this continent have a native term for it. That’s one of the many inescapable contradictions that Asians, South Asians in particular, have to live with because of the contested nature of much of what was once a shared vocabulary. History has invested new meanings in words and terms, none of which appear neutral of politics in our times. With such contradictions, there is an urgent need to imagine a collective future independent of nation states and its borders.

The youth already makes a large proportion of the subcontinent’s population.

It is the ‘young’ Subcontinent that holds the key to the destiny of South Asia.

Most regions here are rapidly urbanizing, pulling and reformulating young minds within the logics of the city. A city brings together diverse cultures and grows through the politics of friction and tension. Socio-cultural differences get accentuated or negotiated within the work-life dynamics of cities. Apart from the urban centers, much of the youth along the multiple borders is born into the tumultuous landscape that still finds itself struggling with several issues of security and survival. In addition, insufficient access to infrastructures of education, livelihood and identity in these regions has failed the youth in patience, promise and productivity. So much of South Asia sits in a geography of conflict. A lot of young energy is spent in migration towards claiming opportunity and optimism. Such anxieties often play out unexpectedly even when young minds from different parts of South Asia confront each other.

Unaware of their common pasts, the lingering separatist colonial imagination frequently brings them in ideological opposition to each other. A constant

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underlying pressure operates thus, through the young subcontinent into its present construct.

What methods can we strategize to bring the youth of South Asia into a productive dialogue? What are the ways of inducing confidence and warmth within the hegemonic politics of polarization? In order to counter these currents, Young Subcontinent need not invent another South Asia, but perhaps retrieve shared pasts that lie under the debris of contemporary political events.

This seems quite possible in the large canvas of time, where seven decades is not even a blink. Artistic practice has the potential to challenge the pervading notion that holds the present in thrall and inhibits human imagination from transcending the limits imposed by the political present. Through its inherent abstractions, an art object invites perspectives, gently opening up avenues of communication. In this realm, what conversations must the artists of young subcontinent initiate? How should its publics be brought together to talk to each other, and on what conceptual grounds? Young Subcontinent aims to build a platform, a framework for such discussion to take place, redirecting cultural differences into investigative thought streams of relearning the subcontinent.

South Asia, certainly, is an artificial construct, a convenient umbrella term to describe the numerous ethnic, linguistic communities and collectives that habit this landmass. The sacred geography of the subcontinent with its complex faith and pilgrimage systems reveals a spiritual brotherhood that has immense capacity to reconcile contradictions. Throughout history, the entire subcontinent has remained a fluid cultural zone sharing languages, scripts and systems that allowed transfer of knowledge and ideas. The subcontinent is also home to the displaced nation of Tibet, which exists as a communal, cultural and political idea in the imagination of the large refugee population.

The national liberation movements of the last century were interconnected in terms of ideas and imaginaries. Mahatma Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Rabindranath Tagore, Iqbal, Bharathi etc. transcended national landscapes. In any case, cultural expressions tend to resist control and refuse to be policed.

There are multiple counter-narratives and imaginations possible against the present oppressive narrative of nation states.

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If art is the method that one must harness to produce these counternarratives, one may be compelled to ask - what is the representational future of South Asia? Does it lie for instance in the numerous oral, textual and performative traditions linked to the two epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, that have shaped the imagination of communities across the continent? Does it lie in its common colonial past, but in ideologically divorcing from the narrative of western modernity? Does it lie in (re)claiming or (re)defining an Oriental world-view? Such questions have begun to push intellectuals in the subcontinent to not only move away from its colonial past, but also find their own narrative in which they can describe their experience of the world. Yet, these discourses may not remain so binary. Technology and globalization have interwoven multiple futures of several cultures together, that have fundamentally altered the way in which the youth of south Asia views the world. Still, their appropriation of such media presents a whole new arena of inquiries. One can not deny however, a looming anticipation to hear a new narrative in which South Asia and the East, so to say, begins telling its own story.

Within the contemporary geopolitics, there is a fair chance for such questions to find unexpected answers. It is the need of the hour to invest in the project

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of cultural futures at large. In the present, capitalist tendencies of securing power often overlook long term issues of cultural importance. The rise of an ambitious China shall inevitably leave its imprint on the subcontinent.

Trade hungry, it is exploring new means to export its economic surplus.

Initiatives like ‘One Belt, One Road’ that aims to connect the entire Eurasian continent territorially may result in profound changes in the way people in the subcontinent identify to their communities. India’s attempt to Act East and its plans for the Indian Ocean region may also, on the other hand, reshape the subcontinent’s destiny. This may, for instance, revive Myanmar’s historic links with the subcontinent. Simply put, the political, economic and cultural issues that the next generation are likely to engage with may be of entirely different kind.

Young Subcontinent aims to bring artists from its countries together with the hope of reconciliatory confrontation. It ought to build itself as a community willing to engage with challenges of reclaiming its difficult history. Through a framework of workshops, residencies and exhibition, the project aims to foster dialogue while bringing up questions about the subcontinent’s cultural future.

As a cultural project, it aims to observe and extend patronage to artists/ cultural activists who have the potential to cogently represent the flux of their times. It believes in establishing a mechanism of patronage that can inculcate confidence within a community of artists and intellectuals who are serious about issues and challenges that the present beholds, yet whose artistic futures are uncertain. From excavations to archiving and exhibiting, our times call for a new phase of intense thought and action. Young Subcontinent ought to be that platform which will nurture and nourish the new expression

Riyas Komu Curator

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young subcontinent R

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Parag Sonarghare Human face, in its own sense reveals many aspects of a person. I see face as evidence of one’s journey, psyche, it reflects a metaphysical realm of one, which becomes person’s feel. For me, what exists are layers, what person is made up of. I don’t see it as single unite body but collection/ layers of experiences. There are experiences, feelings, moments, time, conditions in which subject must have lived in. But it is the body/face as evidence where my center of interest is.

Untitled, 2016 90 inches x 66 inches Acrylic on canvas Parag Sonarghare, Baroda, India

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The Custodian of Dy(e)ing, 2016 184 cm x 612 cm Oil on canvas K L Leon, Kerala, India

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K L Leon While new forms of subjectivity and sensibilities are being excavated and defined through different modalities, painting remains a true study of our existence. In the context of South Asia, artists have been relentlessly investigating history to challenge contemporary mainstream suppositions and prejudices. But there still exists a certain construct that expects artists to take part in the, still-ongoing, post-colonial process of redefining cultural specificities while still being mired in the colonial and pre-colonial clichés about nation/regional identity.

I believe that politics without imagination is equitable to bureaucracy; however it’s juxtaposition with man-made tools and cultural produce allows me to establish a world that reflects my ‘locality’ without being merely nostalgic. And without this recourse to nostalgia, my work seeks to confront broad shadows of doubt that plagues notions of history, culture, migration, and place.

The work for Young Subcontinent, curated by Riyas Komu, is an exploration of historical, cultural, and political roots through still-life allegories. But the danger with allegories is that it can easily be misrepresented as myth when placed out of time and history. Capturing these allegories, as a painter, then becomes an act of making emblems out of lands, myths, cultures and lives. Therefore it becomes essential that the work also address the critical methods of archiving, research and intervention while harnessing new narratives to amplify perception.

In that context, the work seeks to explore landscape(s), through historical and cultural vignettes, and its increasing alienation from its nature and ‘roots’ as a result of expanding industrialisation and urbanisation. This landscape not only takes advantage of the lived and living histories of the land and its people, its colours, memories, cycles of birth and death, and even its flora and fauna but also of contemporary art’s incompleteness and ability to host many narratives without conforming to a determined discourse. Though “nostalgia” is often invoked as an yearning for ‘purity’ and the ‘good old times’, my landscape(s) seeks to assert that the artist too is very much a part of the world; that the canvas itself is not a transcript, but rather a carefully created construct where the local seeks precedence over the global.

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The Land and the Lore Variable (within 8 feet approx.) installation of 12 pieces Graphite, pencil colour, water colour, casein, collage on paper and wood

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Shrimanti Saha My work is a compilation of detailed collaged drawings, depicting allegories of historical significance and mythological references; mingled with personal experiences.

They are rendered from the imagination of the present and placed with figures which are depicted like objects/shapes (collaged paper mounted on board); denoting a sense of fragmentation and the feeling of being embedded in the collective memory.

The intention of the work is to explore the possibilities of drawing, collage and storytelling while commenting on the ideas of identity, exploitation and the present as a conse­quence of the past.

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Street South Asia Instagram Project Abdul Halik Azeez, Srilankaw

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Abdul Halik Azeez Invited as a street and documentary photographer based in Colombo Sri Lanka, ­­­­­the exhibition space featureed three of Azeez’s projects. a. His ongoing work on Instagram, an online platform on which he has been publishing for over 3 years, b. a recent photojournalistic/research work on post-war Islamophobia and intolerance in Sri Lanka, and c. an ongoing work of created especially for the festival in which Azeez curates photographs and narratives from the region on Instagram.

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Susiman Nirmalavasan The past war turned many women as widows. It is not easy to survive without husband in our culture. These women are prohibited to take part in the orthodoxy and the rituals. The compensation to them given by the government is not satisfactory. It is a big challenge to them to be the leader of the family as they have to face problems regarding the economy. These women are committed to sexual harassment more than the others. As we able to set up their problems one on another, I try to create my visuals. I paint their portraits on the hand loomed fabrics which has been made by the widows living in our surroundings. I would like to exhibit them by hanging on one another like curtains, which can be seen by opening the fabric one by one.

Throughout this work I come forward to show the widow women living with various challenges.

White Curtain and Women (installation art) 60 inches x 96 inches cloth (12 pieces) & 21 inches x 60 inches Burnt wood Charcoal, acrylic on hand loom cotton cloths and burnt wood Susiman Nirmalavasan, Srilanka

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Zainab Haidary Every body is a politician. Each has their own judgment. When the real politicians and the government don’t give you clear answer and you are looking for the answer, you become the politician. In my home town, before talking about personal issues people talk about politics and they have their own answers.

Since August of 2016 I started working on a documentary in Kabul. This film layers many paradoxical points, topics and views. “Politicans” makes the situation more Abstract. In the political situation it seems that here is kind of attempt to make problems abstract. when a realistic problem shape to abstract format it is hard to show it and it is hard to get into. The film deals with such dilemmas.

Politicians Film Zainab Zaher, Afghanistan / Berlin

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Letter from Korlai 22 minutes 16 mm film, digital transfer Aman Wadhan, Pune, India

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Aman Wadhan On India’s Konkan coast, in the village of Korlai, a sense of quaintness pervades its Portuguese heritage, the Creole, the faces, and the fort. The filmmaker had visited this place once, as did his friend, of whom nothing is ever said. Years later, an assignment brings the filmmaker back to Korlai. Memories revive but what compels his wayward excursion this time is the elemental and the immemorial wherein his solitude finds refuge. In the time of yellow grass, with steps receding and prayers unanswered, a desire for oblivion forks the search for images of exile and belongingness. This experience surfaces through grainy 16mm images and an elegiac voice-over, which retrace a sense of remembrance, loss, perception, and time intersecting with an inner self and with history. A letter for Korlai also becomes a letter to a dear departed; and in reading this letter, in seeking a new way of inhabiting the world, a vision of Korlai emerges that is both attentive and phantasmagoric, a series of possible angles and tributaries that the viewer and traveller might possibly take.

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Disturbed Corner Installation Bricks, cement and other construction material Teja Gavankar, Mumbai, India

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Teja Gavankar The interrelationship between different urban spaces, and the way the individual relates and reflects upon them is the primary subject of my inquiry.

Working with architectural sites, I find it interesting to think of the “corner” within a space to represent an individual’s “personal area” - that which distorts, deforms and ultimately becomes the impression of the changing identity in the way it is occupied.

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Inside  30-35 mints Live Performance Anuradha Upadhyay, Baroda, India

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Anuradha Upadhyay “Inside” is a silent act which develops from extreme silence to extreme loudness physically and mentally ; in coordination with movements and body gestures. My concern behind this act is simply to develop a sense of resistance in a body and viewers mind. The act will explore through the body which seeks freedom. I have been exploring this idea of being “Inside” through different aspects and many ways. It clearly denies the idea of being controlled by overpowered systems - dominated by one sided ideology or a truth, simultaneously it speaks out for the conditioned womanhood in the country.

I see this as the basic project - proposal and it’s having lots of possibility to evolve by the time the day comes to perform. I would like to explore it in an open space during the art festival in Goa - this year. Hopefully.

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Anupama Alias This project will be the continuation of my recent series of works and it is closely associated with the curatorial concept. I would like to display my work in the form of a pillar which consists of eight floors. Except the first and the last,the other rows will consist of my small framed water colour drawings. It is designed to have the technical facility to rotate the raws and individual portrait separately as per the need of the viewer. The first and the last rows are planned to work up on the texts and encarvings on pillars. The other raws carry 15 works per each and the individual works are made to be two dimensional in form.

Receptacles, Residues, Retributions from my Remaining Life 10 cm x 6.5 cm (90 frames with both sides) on a 10 feet cylinder Installation Anupama Alias, Kerala, India

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Where the Small Things Are (?)

Sound Installation Isuru Kumarasinghe, Srilanka

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Isuru Kumarasinghe As a result New world of urbanized profit centric reproduction base economic culture created dense,intense,rich, noisy, loud sonic environment anywhere whether it’s city or village. Sank in this urban drone we slowly forgetting subtle things that defines idea of living. small things bring up the rare colors emotions that makes to think emotionally who we are in inner and outer life humans in relation to what around us.

Where the small things are(?) is a speaker installation using microscopic field recordings, subtle manipulated/generated sounds focused on a sonic experience

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The Irritating Machine 76 cm X 61 cm, 13 pcs woodcut print on paper, sensor with audio and lights (light box) Kabi Raj Lama, Nepal

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Kabi Raj Lama Since 1990s, Nepal has seen countless coalition governments fight over the nation’s direction. Change in political office has been such that most Nepalis are unable recall all Prime Ministers of the past two decades.

The system is broken.

Yet political institutions have grown exponentially – it has stumbled into the far reaches of society. And examples of the stagnation brought on incessant political change are plentiful.

All Nepalis, young and old, have been left indifferent and disenfranchised. Politics and democracy has become a farce of undelivered promises in abundant media. This has only served to deepen the apathy and frustration of Nepalis.

Reflecting on these dynamics the artist proposes to create a walkthrough installation that creates an immersive audio/visual experience to affect the viewers with the same sense of hopelessness and frustration.

Details Title (Irritating machine) is series of woodcut portraits of 13 of Nepali politicians who have served held office of the Prime Minister in the past 25 years.

These portraits will be presented in a light box (within a dim setting) to create a ‘propogrand’ image. Each box carries a vocal clip of public speeches made by the politician during their term as Prime Minister of Nepal. The clips will be launches by motion sensors when viewers walk past to appraise the portraits.

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Erased Memories 36 inches x 24 inches Photographs Jeannette Gaussi, Afghanistan / Berlin

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Jeanno Gaussi It’s a pity that Jeanno could not make it to the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, 2016. Having done multiple rounds of the VISA office, Jeanno was denied VISA to India for no particular reason. To some extent, this also echoes the strained relationship between the countries of the subcontinent. Infact, Jeanno has regularly visited India in the past, and no one can really predict what parameters work in visa approvals in cross the subcontinent borders.

Inspite of this drawback, she was able to send us images of a project that she undertook in 2007, which we could print and install at the exhibition.

Jeanno sent us some vivid images of Kabul. One can see in the grainy, burnt out images the lonely landscapes of Afghanistan. Large dry stretches of land are encompassed within the fold of distant mountains that also contain the city. The photographs have serendipitously desecrated, (as Jeanno informs us), much like the landscape itself. Shot from a distance, most photographs try to capture the overwhelming silence of the city. In the selection of images, one sees little sign of life, creating a sense of strangeness and fear. Is this place desolate? Do people only stay inside? Is it too aloof to be outside? Are the outdoors safe? These are questions that have come to grip me on a primary viewing of the images.

The washed out photographs on one hand metaphorically represent the unfamiliarity of a distant unknown landscape, and on the other, allow the viewer to fill in the “gaps” with their own imagination. Phenomenally, they evoke simultaneous sensations of tranqulity and fear. Has the city calmed down after a turmoil, or is this the silence before a large upheaval? The faded photographs leave us in suspended time - sometimes leading into, and sometimes leaving us within Kabul’s political geography. They may also give us an impression that the photographs were taken by a fugitive - rather they make the viewer feel like one...creating a sense of suspense and secrecy. But more than any thing else, the photographs become an apt mirror of Kabul’s past, as much as the artist’s.

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Invisible Connection II Installation (photographs, light box, video, construction tools, printed passport, mirror box) Various Mekh Limbu, Nepal

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Mekh Limbu My art work is a visual diary about relationship between me and my father.

I belong to Kirat origin; youth joinining the British and Indian Army is very common trend in my society. However, in later days the pattern of migration shifted. Most of my relatives and villagers were flying to Malaysia and gulf countries as labor workers. My father was a primary School teacher at Dhankuta, Nepal before he joined a Construction Company at Doha, Qatar and have been working there for 20 years. Being only person to earn in the family of eight members, it was very difficult and challenging for him to run the family as a primary school teacher. Therefore he left Nepal when I was just 8 years old. Though he was not physically presence his continuous support, love and care was sensed in the family.

In the course of 20 years my father visited us only four times. In the meantime, Nepal went through major socio- political and technological changes like royal family’s massacre, civil war, end of monarchy, movement for democracy & federal government and endless strikes. All of these affected the socioeconomic structure of the country. This instability in the country led to more internal and international migration. While most of my friends were applying for foreign education or employment, I joined Fine Art College in the capital city and I started my career as an artist.

Me and my father’s life diverted in different directions because of his absence for such a long time. The intimacy we had slowly faded away, although he tried to keep it alive through frequent communication by means of letter and phone calls. This is a critical problem in many families in our country. Like my father there are millions of Nepalese who works outside of Nepal separated from their families. The issue of International labor migration is my personal experience but it is related with many other people who are also facing these critical circumstances. Every day almost 1700 people are leaving Nepal for work. And most of them are young people.

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History Always Repeats, 2016 9 ft x 5 ft (6 panels) Mixed Medium on Wood, Saju Kunhan, Mumbai, India

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Saju Kunhan Throughout history, there were many civilizations and lands, which are buried under history or lost in mysterious conditions. The reasons are mostly unknown. But we make speculations with available information and hypothesis.

The search for new lands always opens up the possibilities of invasion and violence, which was and is always the result of somebody’s domination over the others. Neo-modes of information and ‘news or resources’, which may or may not be reliable, have the power to change or divert the entire connotation of a subject and it acts as the new mode of domination.

METHODOLOGY I have a habit of visiting different places through ‘Google map’, especially the areas, which has considerable his­torical and archeological value. And from here, I take screenshots of zoomed areas, stitch it together to make a large scale map.

The recycled woods; which is nearly 200-300 years old, as mate­rial, was part of an entirely different functional existence before. Somehow it is the rebirth of the wood as an art piece. Its damages, marks and corrosions were from its previous birth.

The medium plays a vital role. Here I used panels of recycled wood to transfer the images. The slow manual process of transferring the digital prints on wood, gives accidental results. While transferring, through the process we can’t predict how the final result would be. I often got maps with missing and erased areas along with extra lines and marks on it. The semi transparency of the wood surface and its rusted areas created some mystery to the map.

Moreover, the recycled wood, which has an unknown history and has lost and damaged surfaces, creates holes and erases certain lands from the map.

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Shifting Valley 20 minutes 15 seconds Video Kishor Kayastha, Nepal

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Kishor Kayastha Kishor Kayastha was a 5-hour-drive away from his hometown of Bhaktapur when the April 25 earthquake struck. A photographer by profession, Kayastha had only recently—about a month prior to the quake—started video documenting the Valley. Not attuned to the art of moving pictures, the photographer was in the process of learning videography, as he went around shooting the older parts of the city. And in about two week’s time, he had made rounds of almost all the major areas: documenting the lives of the people there, the ancient and the overtaking architecture and capturing processes of festivals and processions happening during.

A lot of areas Kayastha documented prior to April 25 were destroyed by the earthquake. Medieval architectures dating back to as early as the 13th century now were piles of bricks and stone, and within them were buried memories of generations of Kathmandu denizens who had lived and grown to engage with and love the city. Kayastha is one of them. And for somebody who has been photographing the city for more than 25 years now, the devastation came as a shock. But the artist refused to stop just then.

So, after the Great Quake, when aftershocks were still a constant, Kayastha started visiting the same places that he had filmed in the past. He started recreating all the shots that he had taken pre-quake; all the while documenting the post-quake life of the localities and the people who inhabit them in his videos.

Over time, a phase of video-documentation was completed. This project might not have been intended to put out to the world, but now as Kishor looks up to it, he finds himself more focused on this project to complete and showcase it to the larger mass telling a story of a transcending valley.

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Sky Fallen Down Three triangles - of 5 feet side Acrylic on canvas P. Pushpakanthan, Sri Lanka

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S P Pushpakanthan This work depicts the experience of the war before, during, and after as three separate triangles. I use triangles to symbolize riots, war and the stolen past. The triangles also generate energy and power. They signify productivity and with this, pyramids of power and bureaucracy. I have chosen to work with triangles to criticize this very power and bureaucracy, which protects and nourishes inequality. The triangles are filled with wells, which signify the hopes and disappointments of people as they confront the hardships of conflict. Instead of being able to look upwards towards the sky or the heavens in search of hope, growth, inspiration, or salvation, during the conflict such hopes were futile; thus, the sky fell down into the well. The dark shades represent the dark past and the dark feelings that enveloped the people, while the brightness of the moon in the third panel depicts the peace and relative hope of the post-conflict times. In this third panel, the moon is depicted through a new and bigger well which suggests empowerment such as in political representation and development.

However, there is a second well—smaller and disregarded on the side. This calls attention to the unequal nature of post-conflict ‘peace’ as divided between the majority (who enjoys a new well and full moonlight) and the minority (who still lives in the dark).

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Human But Not Human Being 5 ft x 4 ft Mixed Media on Paper Farzana Ahmed, Bangladesh

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Farzana Urmi Ahmed The concept of rationality in contemporary thoughts mainly works as a theoretical framework that puts its emphasis on working across multidisciplinary and media. However, I would like to frame mine as way of aligning an expressive language of art with an intuitive, spontaneous interpretation of reality. My project of Relational thus is connected to my way of seeing – through which I would like to advance my experimentation with representation that thrives on the technique of defamiliarization. Though defamiliarization is often seen as distancing, I would like to propose this as an intuitive way of connecting to reality. As graphic artists and painter, I would also like to examine the possibility of exploring the possibility inherent in such a technique while these two methods are fused and used to forward a certain kind of expressiveness.

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Auto De FĂŠ - The Sea is History 240 inches x 80 inches (Eight Panels of 60 inches X 40 inches each) Water Colour and Gouache on Paper Kedar Dhondu, Goa, Indi

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Kedar Dhondu ‘Auto De Fé: The Sea is History’ explores my overarching interest in light, history and time, the work, looks at the migration through the lens of religious persecution and cultural hegemony. In Auto De Fé, the ocean plays an important role. It is symbolized as an intermediate zone between the past and the present, the particular and the general, the local and the global. Here I am interested in showcasing the societal topics it addresses, from migration to social and economic disenfranchisement and suppression, and religious violence that highlights the past of Goa’s history.

The African people(called as Kafris or Cafres) were brought to Goa in the 15th Century as slaves to work for Portuguese. Thousands of these people got detached from their African roots and their families. Memories of their violent departure and exile form an important part of Goa’s history.

The Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510 and its subsequent rule by Portugal resulted in a large-scale conversion of Goa’s indigenous population to Christianity. The state of Goa then became the centre of Christianization in the east. After conversion, locals were usually granted Portuguese citizenship. The rapid rise of converts in Goa has been described as mostly the result of Portuguese economic and political control over the Hindus.

In 1560, the ‘Inquisition’ was established in Goa. It involved persecution of Hindus as well as Christians. It was used as instrument of social control, as well as method of confiscating victim’s property and enriching the Inquisitors.

The converted dark heads of the local Hindu Gods of present Temples of Goa, idols of which are, originally of Gold, silver and other metals (are rendered with similar darkness of the destroyed basalt stone Hindu Temples and deities). These heads of Gods hovers over the undulating movement of waves of the ocean, creates an intensely meditative, almost therapeutic atmosphere in ‘Auto De Fé’. Thus the images of Gods signify the Hindu practice of replicating manifestations of a deity in order to achieve spiritual merit.

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Clockwise Riyas Komu addresses YS artists to the project and its ambition Art Historian Gayatri Sinha presents and discusses works of YS artists YS Artists interact with Yolanda D’souza’s and discuss her career Rajendra Usapkar showing his abstract art to artists from the subcontinent

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Clockwise Discussion with photographer Ram Rahman Prof. Ahilan from Sri Lanka presents his works to the YS artists Visit to the Studio of Yolanda D’souza Francis and Verodina Desouza, a painter and sculptor in Saligao.

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Post Goa ‘Post Goa’ is a unique way of bringing the children of Goa to share their ideas of/with the city. Postcards are one of the oldest communication devices – an open-format card relayed from one postal geography to other allowing its carriers to engage freely with its content. In this line of thought, ‘Post Goa’ offers the kids the scaled canvas of a postcard to openly share with everyone the way they see the world. The miniature format of the postcard rests the apprehension of filling up a large canvas to a conceivable space. A postcard is also a fleeting entity – it is always bought to merely be passed on to another person. In this sense, the postcard always has a temporal sense of belonging, referring in content, as well as form (small, sturdy and transportable) to different time spaces. The idea of communication is central to the exercise – how do thoughts become visuals? How do children process the world they experience? What strategies do they use to convey their ideas to others within the limited space of the postcard? These inquiries surround the choice of postcard as a medium.

On the other hand, ‘Post’ Goa also invokes a certain geographical imagination of a space beyond its time. It titillates us to escape the present into a near or distant tomorrow. Reasonably withdrawn from worldly baggage, children are often able to imagine a world that may take us away from the serious and the pragmatic. We may like to discover through children’s works, what are the contemporary vectors in which their minds think? What fascinates children in the age of technology and media? What issues of their environment do children like to focus on / engage with? In short, what future do they hold?

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These are questions that underpin not only the present project, but also the Young Subcontinent Project at large.

Postcards once came to be widely used to capture the best moments of place visually. In recent times, “postcard” has become an adjective that refers to a memory that ought to be captured, and preserved for future. Goa is undoubtedly one such picture-postcard city, known not for its skyline or urban setting, but its leisurely and relaxing and scenic landscapes. Invariably, Goa comes to be extensively photographed; and at the same time a background for many to photograph themselves. Picture postcards of a place are sent out to greet distant people, at the same time, invite them into an alternative landscape.

‘Post Goa’ takes this opportunity to welcome people to not only the country of Goa in India, but also the world of young imagination, as well as the world of art. The project is planned as a catalytic event through which youngsters get a platform to exhibit their work and invariably become a part of a larger artistic discourse within their city. We believe that this initiative will leave an imprint that will trigger future transformative processes for people as well as the place through methods of art, sustaining curiosity and interest through the agency of young minds.

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Open Site Open Site is a suggestion towards dissolving boundaries – between nations, states and more importantly between people and art. By bringing international street artists to the city of Goa, Open Site aims to make an intervention that gently provokes the public to imagine their lives in a broader socio-political domain. From graffiti to murals, street art is a vibrant form of visual practice that challenges our established notions of space, scale and surroundings.

Street Art in the 21st century has used interdisciplinary techniques and been subversive in its modes of communication. By taking ahead these qualities, Open Site intends to transform the city into an event staging itself as an argument of artistic imagination.

The connotation of Goa as an open site cannot be missed. Historically, Goa has been one of the gateways for the entry of Portuguese culture into the Indian subcontinent. More recently, Goa is known for its openness to a range of cultural and intellectual figures. It also hosts significant local and international population as well as festivals that makes the site appropriate for purposes of leisure and relaxation. Goa thus becomes an interesting site for remediation of several issues of tension, violence and conflict troubling the contemporary world. Further, art becomes the method to intervene and establish dialogue with people who encounter the shores of Goa. It inevitably becomes a place that attracts a multitude of sights from all over.

Open Site will also project urban space as a place of reflection and

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contemplation by adding value to the mundane corners that are almost overlooked everyday. It may also bring attention to the unnoticed parts of our physical environment by sheer surprise. Often, we choose to traverse through our city by-lanes through the stories they offer to us. Open Site allows possibilities of interweaving new narratives through the city within our everyday journeys. By bringing together their respective established methods and subjects of street art along with the history of Goa, Open Site seeks artists to bring out a unique narrative that fits the contemporary landscape of the place.

Serendipity Arts Festival creates an apt environment for such intervention through its multidisciplinary programme that brings together practitioners of art and culture from diverse fields and backgrounds together under a common roof in the city of Goa. While much of the components of this festival are planned as indoor events, the Open Site project invites street artists to experiment the city as their canvas, and thus completes the ambition of the festival to reach out to larger audiences.

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YOUNG SUBCONTINENT ARTISTS

OPEN SITE ARTISTS

POST GOA

Abdul Halik Azeez, Sri Lanka Aman Wadhan, India Anupama Alias, India Anuradha Upadhayay, India Farzana Urmi, Bangladesh Isuru Kumarasinghe, Sri Lanka Jeanno Gaussi, Afghanistan K L Leon, India Kabi Raj Lama, Nepal Kedar Dhondu, India Kishor Kayastha, Nepal Mekh Limbu, Nepal Parag Sonarghare, India S P Pushpakanthan, Sri Lanka Saju Kunhan, India Shrimanti Saha, India Susiman Nirmalavasan, Sri Lanka Teja Gavankar, India Zainab Haidary, Afghanistan

Roa Faith47 Escif Nemo Hanif Kureshi

Students invited from 20 schools across Goa

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Biographies Abdul Halik Azeez Colombo, Sri Lanka (b. 1985) Abdul Halik Azeez is a photographer based in Colombo Sri Lanka. His work is often activist in nature, superimposing a surrealist, spiritual and decolonial lens on the political, economic and cultural. He has worked as a journalist, economist and a development sector consultant and currently studies the use of language in new media. His work has been exhibited at the Saskia Fernando Gallery in Colombo, various other Sri Lankan spaces and Internationally in Dubai and Greece.

Aman Wadhan Pune, India (b. 1982) Aman Wadhan works as a filmmaker and cinematographer. He attended the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, receiving a post-graduate diploma in film direction. His practice is research-based, process-oriented and includes film, photography and text—an on-going exploration of living with awareness in light of transience. His films are stirred by spatial hauntings of memory, focussing on specific locations and micro-histories, often tracing blind spots of representation from the cultural margins, bringing different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence.

Anupama Alias Hyderabad, India (b. 1990) Anupama Studied MFA Painting at Hyderabad Central University and did her BFA & MFA Applied Art from RLV College of Music and Fine Arts. Her artworks reflect the way of society transformation and addresses rapid shifts and infliction in everyday life. Currently, she lives in Hyderabad.

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Anuradha Upadhyay Baroda, India (b. 1993) Anuradha Upadhyay is an artist and performer based in Baroda. She has completed her bachelors in painting and masters in Print making from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, in Gujarat, India. Anuradha likes to explore the concept of duality within her works. She attempts to capture not places but rather spaces that have a history and also a certain sense of mystery. Laden with metaphors and conjunctions, her work reflects the grim truths of the current society and happenings. It appears in variable combinations of drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, and performance art. Anuradha has participated in several workshops, art camps and group exhibitions at Delhi, Baroda and other towns in Gujarat. The artist lives and works in Baroda.

Farzana Ahmed Urmi Dhaka, Bangladesh (b.1980) Dhaka-based artist Farzana Ahmed Urmi’s practice focuses on printmaking and painting. Her work is heavily influenced by the people she encounters in her daily life. Her canvases are full of human stories, some from people that she only knows from a glimpse on the street or from television, and others are from people close to her, but personal contact in variable proximity is important to her work. She completed her MFA and BFA in printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka and has participated in several art camps and residencies in Bangladesh, Spain, and Japan.

Isuru Kumarasinghe Sri Lanka (b. 1987) Isuru began delving into the expanse of sonic artistry and music at the age of 13. From his early days creating original music with computer software, Isuru’s interest later deepened towards the recondite nature of sound experience, acoustic potential and expanding perception of listening. He was largely a part of the Sri Lankan underground art scene as experimental musician visual and sound artist, and has also done several sound performances. Isuru Kumarasinghe currently is part of Musicmatters Collective and co-organizing Musicmatters festival of non mainstream/experimental music in Colombo.

Jeanno Gaussi Afghanistan (b. 1973) Jeanno Gaussi, born in Kabul, is a Berlin based mixed media artist. She started her art career as a video and film artist and has been shown internationally in many festivals. The works of Jeanno Gaussi deal with questions of cultural

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identity and the storage of memory-scraps. Gaussi’s multicultural background – born in Kabul in 1973, raised in Kabul, New Delhi and Berlin – has a major impact on her artistic work. From 2007, Gaussi has extended her art practice to also include photographic artworks and installations (found objects) where she manifested many projects in her residencies in Pakistani, Jordanian, Turkish and German galleries.

Kabi Raj Lama Kathmandu, Nepal (b. 1986) Kabi Raj Lama is a contemporary Nepali printmaker based in Kathmandu.

He is a graduate of the Kathmandu University Center of Art and Design and received training on woodcut and lithography the Meisei University, Tokyo under the tutelage and apprentice of esteemed Japanese printmaker Shibuya Khazuyoshi. Lama was part of the Steindruck Stipendium, Munich and the Guanlan Print-making Forum, Shenzen, China.

Kedar Dhondu Goa, India (b. 1981) Kedar grew up in Mandrem village of North Goa. He studied BFA from Goa College of Art in 2005 and MFA from Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts, Performing Arts and Communication, Hyderabad Central University, Hyderabad in 2008. Kedar is interested in unpacking human conditioning and behavior. He invites viewers to involve themselves empathetically in his works by using emotive images of animals as metaphors for human behaviour.

More recently, he is interested in the relationship between this grotesqueness and beauty. He is interested in things that people usually don’t want to look at in art, things they think that are ugly. He experiments these ideas currently in Mandrem, Goa. Kishor Kayastha Bhaktapur, Nepal (b. 1978) Kishor Kayastha grew up taking pictures of the ancient Nepali town of Bhaktapur. His work has redefined the traditional landscape photography in Nepal. Kayastha’s pictures deal with the transcendence of time and stand as the solicitor describing the past and documenting the future. Traversing along with slides, film and digital, Kayastha captured the dances of light and shadows, photographing the contrast and getting lost in between. He established K2 Art Factory intending to mould his photographic stakes and to train the next generation of photographers in Nepal.

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K. L. Leon Kerala, India (b. 1974) Born in Thrissur, Kerala, K L Leon completed a Bachelors in Fine Arts from College of Fine Arts Thiruvananthapuram in 2001 and a Masters in Painting from SN School, Hyderabad Central University in 2003. He also has a degree in Botany from Calicut University, Kerala. Leon is a recipient of a merit scholarship and a gold medal from Hyderabad Central University. He has been awarded residency with scholarship and studio practice at Kanoria Centre for Arts, Ahmedabad (2005-2007). The artist lives and works in Kochi.

Mekh Limbu Kathmandu, Nepal (b. 1985) Mekh Limbu is Kathmandu-based visual artist. He received his MFA from the Central Department of Fine Arts , Tribhuwan University. He is lecturer at Lalitkala Campus,Tribhuwan University. He was awarded the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Center’s Residency Scholarship and created a body of work “Sequential Dissonance” which was exhibitedat the Siddhartha Art Gallery, 2013.Mekh Limbu’s paintings are the quest for the artist’s own identity. He is involved in activities of LASANAA- an alternative art space and with Artree Nepal.

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Parag Sonarghare Baroda, India. (b. 1987) Parag Sonarghare has received his BFA in painting from Govt. Chitrakala Mahavidyalaya Nagpur University, Nagpur and an MVA in Art History and Aesthetics from M.S. University in Baroda. Parag’s practice explores the crossings between painting and performance and attempts to bridge the gap between private and public, art and society and folk and contemporary practice. His experiments have included work in Indian tradition of body painting, taking inspiration from Indian mythological painting and turning it upside down into neo mythological visuals, engaging a live human being as the central figure.

Pakkaiyarajah Pushpakanthan Sri Lanka (b.1989) P. Pushpakanthan holds Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka in 2014. Currently, he is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual & Technological Arts, Swami Vipulananda Institute of Aesthetic Studies (SVIAS), Eastern University, Srilanka. Pushpakanthan work across a range of mediums, including drawing, painting, mixed media, installation, performance and video Art.

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Saju Kunhan Mumbai, India (b.1983) Born in Palakkad, Kerala, Saju Kunhan finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Painting from the Government College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, Kerala in March 2006. His mixed media works on wood deal with archiving and the interpretation of the image in a new context. His practice also focuses on the issues of urbanization and consumer culture. Saju has participated in various exhibitions, camps and workshops, primarily around Kerala. He currently lives and works in Mumbai.

Shrimanti Saha Baroda, India (b. 1987) Shrimanti was born in West Bengal and completed her BVA and MVA from M.S.University, Baroda. Her practice is rooted in the act of drawing, storytelling, narrative and the creation of a personal mythology. She received Inlaks Fine Arts award (2015) and has been part of group shows at Vadehra Art gallery, New Delhi (2016); Nature Morte, Gurgaon (2014); Gallerie 88, Kolkata (2014) and others. She has worked on Illustration projects at the Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Mumbai and with Scholastic Publishers, New Delhi; and has conducted workshops with students at M.S.U on Story, Image making and collage. The artist lives and works in Baroda.

Susiman Nirmalavasan Batticaloa, Sri Lanka (b.1982) Susiman Nirmalavasan is a contemporary visual artist and activist based in Batticaloa, Srilanka, His practice comprises of Visualizing the images which occur through his life experiences and experimenting new approaches and exhibiting, making visuals through the conceptual activities with the people from different age groups in the society.

Teja Gavankar Mumbai, India (b. 1986) Teja makes drawings on paper and urges to make drawings in space too.

She is interested in subverting perceptions of mundane spaces through a nuanced understanding of their physical and psychological underpinnings.

Her current experiments with spaces aim to look at them as “mental states” seen in pushing things from everyday situations and surroundings to an extreme, playing with the minds of the viewer. She believes that alteration, transformation and distortion will create these psychological states in actual physical space.

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Zainab Haidary Afghanistan (b. 1991) Zainab Haidary was born in Daikondi province of Afghanistan and studied BFA at Art faculty in Kabul University, Afghanistan in 2013. Currently, she is studying in the School of Art in Bremen, Germany. Since 2008, Zainab worked as an independent photographer and join with A.P.N. (Afghan Photographers Network). In 2011, she was as teacher assistance in Marefat Art gallery and exhibited some of her art pieces there at the same time. Later that year, her works were also shown in the Culture House of Afghanistan which were highly welcomed by its audience. Zainab is an artist of dOCUMENTA(13) thus, has exhibited her artworks in Kassel, Germany and Kabul in 2012. She is also obsessed with writing and has been publishing cultural articles for open daily society newspaper in Afghanistan and some independent sites.

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Acknowledgements

Curator Riyas Komu Curatorial Advisor Amrith Lal Curatorial Assistant Anuj Daga Extended Managerial Support Serendipity Arts Festival Team Seminar Participants Amrith Lal Gayatri Sinha Packiyarajah Ahilan Installation Sanjay Nair, Komu studio manager Dhananjayan Kuttappan, Installation Sanjay Kothari, Photokina S K Kotian, Framemaker Young Subcontinent Artists Abdul Halik Azeez, Aman Wadhan, Anupama Alias. Anuradha Upadhyay, Farzana Ahmed Urmi, Isuru Kumarasinghe, Jeanno Gaussi, Kabi Raj Lama, Kedar Dhondu, Kishor Kayastha, K. L. Leon, Mekh Limbu, Pakkaiyarajah Pushpakanthan, Parag Sonarghare, Saju Kunhan, Shrimanti Saha, Susiman Nirmalavasan, Teja Gavankar, Zainab Haidary.

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