Peers 2017

Khoj International Artists’ Association S – 17, Khir kee Extension New Delhi, 110017 +91-11-65655873/74, +91-11-29545274

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Peers

20 17

The annual emerging artist residency at Khoj

Production, publishing and copyright Khoj International Ar tists’ Association www.khojwor kshop.org

Peers 2017 Artists-in-residence Ashish Dhola (M.S. Univer sity of Baroda. Vadodara) Sagar Shiriskar (Film and Television Institute of India, Pune) Sahil Ravindra Naik (M.S. Univer sity of Baroda, Vadodara) Tanaya Kundu (Central Univer sity of Hyderabad, Hyderabad) Vrishali Purandare (Shiv Nadar Univer sity, Dadri) Critic-in-residence Ashmita Chatterjee (Jawahar lal Nehr u Univer sity, New Delhi) Khoj Programme Coordinator s & Publication Editor s Mario D'Souza and Mila Samdub Design Sahrish Rahman Photography Suresh Pandey Sagar Shiriskar Ar tists & Critic in Residence Printed at Satyam Grafix No par t of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above mentioned publisher of this publication.

Khoj International Ar tists’ Association receives suppor t from The Norwegian Embassy. Peer s is suppor ted by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation.

Peers 20 17

Ever y year, Khoj opens its door s to a group of recent college graduates and young ar tists, who come together for a month long residency, under the aegis of ‘Peer s’. At its core , the Peer s program acts as a stepping-stone for young ar tists, aiding them through a transitional moment in their lives. The program not only offer s them the physical space and resources necessar y to push the experimental limits of their wor k, but also provides a suppor tive learning environment and an introduction into the larger networ k of the ar ts.

The selection of final candidates is an arduous process, in which the jur y wor ks carefully to select a group of just 6 ar tists from an initial pool of more than 350 applicants. The final par ticipants are chosen to represent a myriad of varied practices and ar tistic backgrounds, and also to give oppor tunity to those not traditionally trained in the ar ts. The idea is to not only choose ar tists whose body of wor k has reached a cer tain level of refinement or maturity, but also to select those who have the most potential to grow from the Peer s program.

An introduction to the PEERS residency program

Khoj International Ar tists’ Association in 2003 initiated ‘Peer s’. The 2017 edition of Peer s has been suppor ted by The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation.

The people who walked into the residency were greeted by Ashish’s second piece at the entrance- a moving microphone. Ashish fitted a microphone with ultrasonic sensor s that determined the movement of the mic by detecting the distance the people moving around were at.

He also adver tised a “Time Wasting Machine” through poster s an pamphlets, that evidently wastes time on the behalf of the user of this ser vice. This machine is something Ashish hopes to develop over the cour se of his career.

Ashish Dhola

B.F.A. Veer Narmad South Gujarat Univer sity M.V.A. (Painting) M.S. Univer sity of Baroda

Ashish’s wor k for the Khoj residency was consolidated in three par ts. There was a video projection of his studio room, projected in the actual studio room, with a notice at the entrance that read “Do not Disturb, I’m wasting my time.” The projection is simple hologram Ashish stands gazing at a blank studio wall, and turns around with a disgr untled expression ever y time someone par ts the cur tain to enter the studio or makes a loud noise. The rest of the studio was left empty, reflected in the video, creating a mirror room effect of white walls.

All three of Ashish’s projects have an under lying strain of satire on an empty preoccupation, on time that is filled with activities that are in themselves meaningless and void, and he caricatures the people who indulge in the active wastage of their time. This wastage of time, in Ashish’s obser vation of the people who crowd the tea stalls and other places, is also a symptom of something greater ; they create echo chamber s of non-discussion, where a lot is said but ver y little holds any actual meaning. Ashish’s project therefore, is a take on the str uctures of discour sepolitical and otherwise, what informs it, and how it affects public spaces and their inhabitants. There is also an examination of the futility of action.

Here, the gaze fixed on the wall and the turning around are repeated, and it creates an effect of stagnation and meaninglessness.

The “Time Wasting Machine” is an ironic innovation. If the concept of a machine is founded on the means to an efficient and quick end, to saving time, here is a machine in sharp contradiction that is exclusively dedicated to wasting time, undercutting the whole purpose of its invention. Ashish also left his phone

number on the pamphlets, which creates a link of direct access to the innovator.

This adds credibility to the wor k, and also creates the space for an interesting social experiment.

and intent without any external footnotes. It exists in itself as a complete unit of what it physically is as well as what it intends to do. There is negligible discrepancy between his wor k and his claim.

The staccato movements of the mic ser ve as a commentar y on the nature of political conver sation that per vades both public and private spaces. Ashish has tweaked a device that has recurring relevance and presence, par ticular ly in the domain of demagoguer y. The mic is a humorous take on the peddling of political discour se, where people listen not to under stand but to reply. It creates an atmosphere of urgency, where one has to constantly speak over other s to be heard, and there are no conclusions and no retention of meaningful insights. It creates an exaggerated platform for people to indulge their armchair activism and glorified but empty conver sations..

The resulting effect was somehow not as impactful as the process initially promised. It could be due to the scattered set up, but the overarching effect was one of three disjuncted pieces that did not conglomerate as a coherent whole. There is no special value in coherence as opposed to a wor k that breaks coherence, but this par ticular project’s fragmented nature bordered dangerously on being unjustifiably entropic.

On the other hand, the use of humour makes Ashish’s wor k ver y accessible, and creates a well-balanced mix of critical engagement and light viewing.

There is no attempt to forcibly intellectualize and theories the concepts and impulses in his wor k. As a result, there is no disjoint between what is intended and what is ar ticulated. The wor k can explicate its own existence

On next page, clockwise from top-left: Please Don’t Disturb, I Am Wasting My Time, Video installation with sensor s; Wor k in progress; Untitled, Microphone with Arduino and sensor

would constantly worr y about whether or not celluloid film- his chosen medium to photograph in- would soon become obsolete.

But this is more than an archive of loss, or a simple fetishization of disappearance through monochromatic photography (which is quite possibly the most perfect recipe for nostalgia). Most impor tantly, Sagar’s wor k is about people; its impulse is located in building relationships with communities and individuals in unconventional ways, ways that are more than one-directional, ar tist-subject relationships.

Sagar Shiriskar

Perhaps at some level it does not go beyond being a photojournalistic essay, but that is also convenient terminology and needs scr utiny. It belies the significance of the process of the project’s formulation and its conglomeration. It belies all the ancillar y developments that are significant in their own domains, that are revelator y of those par ts of the process that do not become perceptible par ts of the finished wor k.

What I therefore appreciate immensely about Sagar’s project is that it is not born of intr usion, of fetishization or objectification. The culminating effect is not one where the subject as a living being has been reduced to mere tokenistic value through a repetition of the image. Somehow, the katib has more than conceptual value in this project, is more than simply being the per son on the other side of the lens, incidental to the ar tist’s larger ideation. Sagar’s willingness to spend hour s and days on end just staying around the katib translates into his wor k as an intimacy, as meticulous labour invested in establishing a relationship. clockwise from top: Sagar’s wor k throws into light the lives of people who occupy small spaces in a city where they go largely unnoticed, and his engagement with Delhi as an outsider perhaps allows him an added insight into things that other s have long been desensitized to. This project preser ves not only the vestiges of an ar t form but also one of its last remaining practitioner s; it may be an archive of loss, but it is also the preser vation of a relationship that will outlive the loss.

Perhaps it is not an archive at all, but something less methodological and more intimate.

Something that bother s me constantly about photography as a medium is the

Which is perhaps why my favourite photograph from the series is one that

Sagar’s photo series at Khoj was shot at var ying locations in and around Urdu Bazaar, and at Mohammad Ghalib’s house in Okhla. A katib is a glorified scribe of the past, a calligrapher for the Islamic royalty.

In other words, a katib in India today is a practitioner of a dying ar t.

Postgraduate Cer tificate in Direction, Film and Television Institute of India Postgraduate Diploma in Cinematography, Film and Television Institute of India

A continuing strain is Sagar’s wor k is perhaps loss. Or nostalgia, although nostalgia echoes implications of undue romanticization, which perhaps makes it a limiting explication of the essence behind his wor k and his choice of subjects. It is closer to a desire to collect memories of things that are disappearing or close to extinction. At one point during the residency, he wanted to shoot images of the veteran among theatres, Regal Cinema, incidentally at a time when it has just been closed from business.

It was not surprising either that he

unquestioned self-assurance and sense of entitlement that accompanies the craft. The ability to freeze and collect a moment with speed and supposed accuracy is one that is mired within a dynamic of power, and a histor y of often neglected ethical responsibility. Due to my inherent suspicions about the medium, the engagement between the photographer and the subject becomes impor tant to me.

The photo series creates a connected narrative of the katib’s life and wor k through singular images- there is detailing of the katib’s tools, of the area around his wor kspace, his clientele.

had initially been rejected. In it, the katib stands, leaning forward on the railing of his balcony, smiling broadly at an ill-lit, ill-kept street, a street fallen out of care, just like the lives that inhabit it. The photograph is out of focus and the lighting is flawed. It is the image of a man in a position of both vulnerability and intimacy, the icon of an unexpected relationship with a stranger with a camera who the katib had no incentive to allow into his home and his life, but he did anyway. It is a beautiful record of an imperfect life reflected in an imperfect image, star kly different from the other aesthetic and technically balanced ones in the series.

But technical perfection is not the only reason to appreciate something.

On next page, Katib-e-Taqdeer Photos and text clockwise from top: Installation View; Wor k in progress; Installation detail

as Suspect/Bomber, Ground Zero sees Sahil place himself, the figure of the ar tist, as a bomber, who not only creates but also simulates an explosion and destroys his own wor k.

The impulse behind Sahil’s wor k is an inquisitive desire to examine the nature and dynamics between violence, ‘open’ spaces and threat, a constant undercurrent tension that all architectural str uctures always exist in.

Sahil Naik

B.F.A. (Painting), Goa College of Ar t M.V.A. (Sculpture), M.S. Univer sity of Baroda

Sahil’s installation could be located in Khir kee, and it could also be anywhere else. His scale to size replica of the str uctures and landscape in and around Khir kee is built in what he calls a post-apocalyptic setup, where str uctures are leftover s, connotative of absences rather than presences. His model creates an enhanced sense of desolation, of a landscape that stands on turbulent ground after the trauma of an unspecified disaster or impact.

One of his previous projects, Ar tist

Perhaps the most remar kable aspect of Sahil’s model of a miniature, abandoned Khir kee is the sheer craftsmanship that went into its making, something that developed into a privilege to witness.

This is what is tr uly impressive about the process of his wor k- all of it could have been outsourced. Someone else could have crafted those models, and the physical labour and sleepless nights could have simply been done away with.

Maybe the model could have been bigger, more extensive, could have been a hundred other things.

None of that happened, and with good reason.

Sahil told me about abandoned heritage houses in Goa, houses nobody lives in anymore, that now stand as container s of the specter s of their ancestral past.

Sahil’s model is also a child of abandonment. If he chooses to call it post-apocalyptic, his wor k takes an interesting turn. If the post-apocalyptic is mar ked by the absence of people and the remains of their days, then one is forced to negotiate the terms in which a place like Khir kee exists and sustains itself in a city like Delhi.

Khir kee is already more or less a non-entity, what is so lovingly called an “informal, unorganized, low income neighbourhood”.

I wouldn’t necessarily choose to call Sahils’ wor k a modeling of a post -apocalyptic. The term seems to me a limiting, rehear sed explication, especially since the dominant visualization of the post-apocalypse is facilitated largely by the American popular imagination and Hollywood cinema. ‘Abandonment’ and ‘invisibilization’ wor k perfectly, and in that, the wor k becomes so much more than a simple rendition of a post -apocalyptic image.

There were also video projections of the interior s of broken old houses in Khir kee as a par t of the project, and this addition did something quite interesting.

It provided an insight into what the interior s of Sahil’s model would probably look like, but in a different medium. It created a disjunct, removing the viewer from the totality of the model, and left the viewer to depend on her/his imagination to fit those interior spaces from the projection within the 3 dimensional piece.

Sahil’s wor k was also remar kable for the way in which it conceptualized the space of Khir kee. Much ar twor k and writing (including my own) has been dedicated to establishing Khir kee as a melting pot of cultures and people, an asylum for refugees and a space of discordant vibrancy. But Sahil’s focus is on the physical str ucturing of the place, and the consequences of having alleyways with buildings so clustered that the sky remains a stranger to the people living there. It is quite literally a perpetual architectural hazard, where collapse of one str ucture would lead, in all likelihood, to a domino effect.

The abysmal living conditions is the experiential reality of these people , and Sahil manages to divest Khir kee of all the romanticization it has been subjected to. The close quar ter s create

a viable breeding ground for disease and pestilence, and one fire somewhere would mean an entire neighbourhood set ablaze.

These buildings are extremely vulnerable to biological and natural disaster s, and Sahils’ model successfully captures this claustrophobia, and amplifies it, with the deterioration in the buildings, the peeling paint, the dust and the largely greyscale tone of the entire piece. The safety of a space like Khoj makes it ver y easy to forget the reality of the neighbourhood just outside. The emptiness of the clustered buildings is loud, highly evident, and creates a view of Khir kee that wor ks as not only a feat of architectural and ar tistic genius but also a reality check.

Sahil’s wor k also encapsulates an element that I choose to value in any wor k of ar t- the investment of the ar tist’s physical effor t in her/his creation. I feel it is this investment that mar ks that final distinction between a wor k of ar t and a ‘product’, because selling hired ar tisans’ effor ts under the garb of one’s own label seems exploitative at best. Perhaps stressing on the alternative is idealistic, because some wor k at some point has to be outsourced, and might simply be beyond the ar tist’s skill set or time. But I find this physical engagement with one’s wor k of great impor tance, because otherwise, it is just another enterprise in manufacturing, something that Sahil manages to avoid wholly.

On next page, Lazaretto, Sculptural Installation with video Inset: Installation Detail

by unnoticed ever y day, while some inhabit the sides of streets and watch life pass them by, creating a system of movement that seems to be on a perpetual collision cour se in a place has its own idiosyncratic way of creating a collective of differences.

The focus on the feet emphasizes the anonymity of the people who become her subjects, what really wor ks about these photographs is that they are careful not to disembody the people they represent by making them into objects. The subjects, if only through their feet, are retained as a whole in the viewer’s imagination.

Tanaya Kundu

B.F.A. (Printmaking), Burdwan Univer sity, West Bengal M.F.A. (Printmaking), SN School of Ar ts & Communication, Univ. of Hyderabad

Tanaya’s wor k at Khoj drew extensively from her experiences in Delhi, thrown into sharp contrast with her experiences in Shantipur and Hyderabad, The entr y to Tanaya’s studio was lined with photographs she had clicked in and around Khir kee , but which focused only on the feet of the people walking past.

Tanaya’s experience of Khir kee is made manifest through these photographs and their placement. A labyrinth of human interaction and miscommunication, Khir kee became for Tanaya a place where one meets people only to have them disappear the next day. Some pass

Tanaya is an ar tist who constantly pushes her self. She spent her time at Khoj crashing into ever y tiny corner of Khir kee, deciphering the ways in which rooms are let and the way the children of prostitutes conceptualize the wor ld from their position, placing her self in situations that were precarious, difficult to under stand, that were not her own, over and over again. Her previous wor k is an ar ticulation of her perception of her gendered identity and femininity, and the physical reality of being a woman in a largely masculine social setup.

One aspect of this thematic that consistently under lines her wor k and transpired in one of her performances at Khoj is her ar ticulation of the delicate relationship between pleasure and pain.

The performance in itself was intensely powerful, and in my estimation, the shock value lies in the fact that what had happened actually only became evident slowly.

For the Open day, Tanaya sat silently facing a wall with her bare back lit by candlelight- created a silent,

stifling effect, and the ambience supplemented the gravity of the impulse behind the performance. The candlelight synchronized beautifully with the idea she was tr ying to explore- the constant flickering changed the shape of the shadow, enhancing Tanaya’s attempt to convey the fragility of the boundaries of gender identity and its constr uction, and the tenuous relationship between desire, pleasure, and pain. With only one corner illuminated, the play of light and shadow was even star ker, throwing the ar tist’s shadow on to the wall, erasing all physical determinants of an identifiable gender identity. Tanaya’s wor k seeks to throw the fragile coexistence of pain and pleasure in desire into light, but she chooses to focus on the pleasure while the pain remains slightly eclipsed, yet unignorable.

Her wor k has ser ved her as a means to channel the fr ustration from all the hindrances she has faced, and her constant negotiation with gender, androgyny, and its social implications on her life as a woman comes from per sonal encounter s with the oppressions that she has somewhat managed to break out of. Her practice draws from real life experiences, and what comes as a great relief is that she does not create an abstraction of the people who she integrates into her wor k, lives of the marginalized, the homeless, the prostitutes, lives declared abject by social diktats beyond their control. Her stor ytelling comes from a place of deep empathy, and she is not a showman who intellectualizes other people’s pain and creates a spectacle out of it. Her cognizance of the depth of other people’s lives and their complications amalgamates with her wor k, and this is something that comes across not only through her wor k for PEERS but also through all her previous projects.

On next page, Left: Documentation of performance; Right (top to bottom): Installation with photos & lights; Open Day performance with candles

place her self within the confinements of the material.

physical

The dome didn’t materialize, but what did was immensely interesting.

Vrishali Purandare B.V. A. (Sculpture), M.S. Univer sity of Baroda

Master s of Fine Ar ts, Shiv Nadar Univer sity

In Vrishali’s wor k is a desire to turn inwards and engage with thematerial while simultaneously forming an ar ticulation directed outwards. There is a need to engage with the material without treating it as an exteriority, and clay allows for an intimacy and a level of physical engagement that perhaps most other materials don't.. In keeping with her exploration of the meaning of engulfment by the materiality of the medium, Vrishali’s initial design was a clay dome built on the floor of her studio, a space that would allow her to step inside a figure created from clay, to

I like to believe that Vrishali is something of a rebel. She once planted weeds in the carefully pr uned, manicured lawns of her institution, whose people maintained these lawns (and therefore, an aesthetic) with a bureaucratic fer vour. At fir st, when I still viewed this act as isolated, I admired it for its value as a one-act instance of rebellion. But this is really who Vrishali is, and what she infuses in her ar t. She just despises ar tificial culturing and boundaries, and the modification of natural spaces to please a cer tain cultivated aesthetic.

She spoke animatedly about a poem by Avtar Singh Pash that synthesized perfectly with what she was doing:

मैं घास हूँ, मैं अपना काम करूँगा। Vrishali’s need for intimate engagement with the material came together with her desire to let the natural wor ld remain an unrestricted element in her final piece for the open day. The final piece was actually two pieces- the incomplete clay dome and a clay wall, extending from the tree right outside to the entrance of her studio, built from pieces of clay removed from the prospective dome inside.

While the clay wall could be seen as an extension of the studio into the cour tyard, Vrishali is insistent on it extending from the tree into her wor kspace, a wall that ironically becomes a space of connection between the interior and the exterior

connecting something something manmade.

organic

and

One aspect of this thematic that consistently under lines her wor k and transpired in one of her performances at Khoj is her ar ticulation of the delicate relationship between pleasure and pain.

The performance in itself was intensely powerful, and in my estimation, the shock value lies in the fact that what had happened actually only became evident slowly.

Vrishali also projected macro footages of pieces of terracotta disintegrating in a glass bowl filled with water. In the center of her studio stood the remnants of her clay dome, which now resembled a ver y shallow well, with one slice of its boundar y donated to the clay wall. On the wall behind that were Sylvia Plath’s words, “I am vertical But I would rather be horizontal.”

The overarching effect was synesthetic and oppressive, due to the ear then colour palette, and a massive visual of cr umbling terracotta without any sound.

There was a strange sense of being deafened, of witnessing the slow unbecoming of a larger thing, and the broken dome stood there like Ozymandias, bearing testimony to a space that had been turned into a disintegration-in-process. Plath’s poem supplemented this feeling of seeing only remnants, witnessing the absence of something; her words are an ar ticulation of what she wants but cannot have, a reiteration of a desire and therefore, a lack.

The clay wall broke down several times,

and Vrishali rebuilt it without any str uctural suppor t. It was an interesting exercise, the recreation of a wor k of ar t over its remainder s, where each new reparation replaced what had existed before- not a replica or a rendition, but a replacement.

Vrishali’s wall was an ironic str ucture; it was built from a metaphor and yet in form it fulfilled the exact opposite function. It was ideated to symbolize the breaching of synthetic boundaries between unrestrained and cultivated natural growth, the reaching in of the terrestrial wor ld into a manmade studio.

When finished, it fulfilled its function with the utmost literalness- it was literally a wall that wouldn’t let the studio door s close, consequently allowing the rain and storm to deliver their casualties inside that space without hindrance. In some way, it also disabled the solipsism that sometimes accompanies ar t as a process.

A dome, being an enclosure, would have allowed the engulfment Vrishali was aiming for, however facile it may be, and created the space for an immer sive experience, an envelopment by pure material. But keeping the possible intentions aside, the wall did something of its own. It had an impact on the level of scale and visuality, of looking at some thing larger than life, a mute shape that stands solid; a shape that enter s the studio slowly, that is par t-tree but not quite, a constant reminder of a forced ver ticality in the face of a desire for the horizontal.

On next page, clockwise from top: Video still; Installation view; Wor k in progress

conceptual brainchild of a str ucture operating within the dynamics of demand, supply and the curated adoption of an aesthetic; that there is an entire industr y dedicated to making a mar ket of ar t. It is unfor tunate that such nomenclature should exist with such ease, in such comfor t, with people feeding into the illusion that ar t can be peddled like wares in a mar ket, that ar t is easy.

What is the value of a wor k of ar t beyond the economic str uctures it operates within, beyond its ability to function as a ‘product’?

Ashmita Chatterjee (Critic-in-residence) B.A. in English Literature, Lady Shri Ram College M.A. in English Literature , Jawahar lal Nehr u Univer sity.

In the form of PEERS, what Khoj manages to provide is a safe space-not only a physical enclosure in a volatile place like Khir kee but also a space that does not judge, interpose or expect a return. It is a rare program which encourages emerging ar tists and ar t practitioner s to step out of the regularities of their existing bodies of wor k, to take a shot at things they haven’t done before , and push their practice and themselves.

The tragedy of the ar t mar ket is that it exists in the form that it does, as a

What I found remar kable about the residents of PEERS 2017 is that the wor k they did in Khoj was not concerned with this mar ket; nobody had externally intellectualized their wor k or their intent to add some sor t of borrowed value to their projects. We came here with whatever each of us wanted to do, did it, and left. The projects were really pieces of what each ar tist does best, and it was hear tening to see ar tists not give in to a cer tain idea of mar ketability.

As the critic-in-residence, I questioned the nature of my wor k several times over the cour se of the four weeks.

What does writing about a visual experience entail? But in retrospect I now under stand that I cannot apply the existing parameter s and methodologies of ar t criticism to this par ticular residency. The obvious reason for that is that I was made privy to the entire process of the creation of these wor ks; the residency system allowed me that occasion. Therefore, to rest my critique solely on the final result would be unfair to the impor tance of the process that each ar tist went through. The process adds a dimension to under standing the

wor k, enables a more wholesome engagement not only with a par ticular project but also with the ar tist, the body of thought and the material demands of such a wor k coming into existence.

The resulting projects, at fir st glance , appear to be completely disparate, but this does not detract from the exhibit in any way. There is no special reason to value under lying interconnectedness in the wor ks of five individuals- the fact that five disparate bodies of wor k emerged from under one residency roof is an interesting enough phenomenon on its own. One significant takeaway from this residency was the impor tance of social engagement and grounding in any ar tistic project. What really adds value to these projects is that they all arise from a direct engagement with the people and the community we inhabited for four weeks, and engagement that had both level and depth. Some of the wor ks came from places of real conflict, which resulted in the ar tists pushing themselves out of their established comfor t zones. There was a desire to create something that somehow adds to the ar t practice , supplements it, and propels it forward.

These seemingly disparate projects also created different lenses through which to access and assess the same city.

Vrishali was in conver sation with the people she bought her clay from; Sagar documented a calligrapher he met in Urdu bazaar. Tanaya documented the lives of people in and around Khir kee..

Ashish took a dig at the deluded sense of impor tance people place on banal conver sations infused with the language of politics. Sahil assessed the physicality of Khir kee, and examined it as a space vulnerable to potential disaster. As a writer, I have to constantly negotiate my relationship with my language.

My own project was an experiment with the academic currency of the language popular ly used in criticism, and the influx of fashionable linguistic vagaries ser ves to create a closed object out of language, and obfuscates meaning rather than creates it. Criticism and analysis often disallows the critic from confronting her/his own language in its texture and form and the terms of creating as opposed to critiquing something. The residency forced me to reassess the value of my ar ticulation, to confront the limitations of language, and to find a way to write about visuals despite those limitations, all the while keeping the unrequired jargon of ar t criticism at bay. I had to realign my focus and divide it equally between the content of my ar ticulation and the craft of its assembly. The residency str ucture allowed me to examine each project in depth, from its inception to its completion, and to write about them in terms of under standing as opposed to interpretation.

PEERS 2017 was relatively quiet, but intense. Ever yday somebody’s wor k decided to take a different tangent.

The process through which ever yone’s wor k unfolded became a precious and tangible aspect of their completion, and it was the residency that allowed this impor tant detail to fit in. There is immense merit in being able to share a space with five other people, tomake your self and your wor k vulnerable to other people while the easier and more tempting option could ver y well be to retreat behind a solipsistic fence. It created a unique nexus where both differences and similarities contribute to a cumulative whole, so while the wor ks may appear disparate and distinct in medium, conceptualization and execution, we left behind a little bit of our selves in each of our wor ks.

PEERS 2017

Open Day

About Khoj

organisation based in New Delhi, which provides physical, intellectual and programmes including workshops, residencies, exhibitions, talks, and community art projects. Khoj has built an international reputation as outstanding alternative arts incubation space. Since 1997, Khoj has developed itself as a unique ‘art lab’, and has supported the experimentation of many leading Indian and International artists. It plays a central role in the advance of experimental, interdisciplinary, and critical contemporary art practice in India– constantly challenging the established thinking about art.

Khoj Team Director Pooja Sood Programmes Mario D’Souza Radha Mahendru Mila Samdub (Khoj Fellow January - June 2017) Administration and Finance Manoj VP Adil Akhtar Rahmani Arun Chhettri Manohar Bhengra Media Suresh Pandey