17 — 19 November 2017
17 — 19 November 2017 Siddhartha Hall Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi
media partner
DIRECTOR’S WELCOME
The story of Khoj is a story of solidarities, one that began with an International Workshop in 1997. Given to us as a gift by the late Robert Loder, founder of the Triangle Arts trust, the International workshop converged possibilities and friendships across the world and more significantly in South Asia. The workshops became a point of exchange and co-learning, contributing to a vibrant independent arts scene in the region. Initiated and supported by Khoj , the South Asian Network for the Arts (SANA), comprising of independent art spaces Vasl in Pakistan, Theertha in Sri Lanka, Britto in Bangladesh and Sutra in Nepal was born across tense borders, visa strictures and meagre funding. It allowed for a sharing of knowledge production, frameworks and ideas, and the inauguration of new mobilities for art and artists despite limited resources and infrastructure. We believe such networks are imperative in creating fluid structures of participation and collective learning. Over the past two years Khoj and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center have collaborated to build opportunities and visibility for exceptional artists and creative practitioners from across Asia. Through this project, Khoj has had the opportunity to speak with several organisations working in diverse regions and political landscapes across Asia, from the Middle East to the Pacific. Asia Assemble is thus an opportunity to bring together stakeholders from across the continent to share challenges, explore connections and exchange ideas. It is an extension of Khoj’s interest in and admiration for the perseverance of artists, curators, institutions and creative communities in continuing to reinvent and devise imaginative frameworks for free expression. 1
We would like to thank all the participants and moderators for accepting our invitation and sharing with us the critical work that they do, against all odds, constantly challenging what it means to be contemporary in an increasingly volatile world. We would like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation, Sher-gil Sundaram Arts Foundation and GoetheInstitut / Max Mueller Bhavan for believing in the project. In particular, we would like to thank Geeta Kapur for her support and guidance and Ashish Rajadhyaksha for his invaluable advice and suggestions. We hope the next two and half days mark the beginning of exciting and provocative conversations and the building of many solidarities in the region.
Pooja Sood Director Khoj International Artists’ Association
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PRELUDE
Between 1405 and 1433 a Muslim eunuch led seven imperial Chinese treasure fleets to South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and West Africa. Kidnapped by Ming armies from his home in provincial Yunnan, Admiral Zheng He, as he would come to be known, rose to power in the imperial capitals of Beijing and Nanjing. Today he is widely celebrated as a military mastermind, a diplomatic genius, and a peaceful envoy. Museums, mosques and artifacts are now appearing around the region in celebration of his seven epic voyages across South Asia, Middle East and Africa. The Chinese government has pumped millions of dollars into Sri Lanka and Kenya, countries that are key nodes in China’s New Silk Route infrastructure network, to support the search for remains of his fleet. The spectral re-emergence of Zheng He and his fleet in geopolitics, visual culture and cultural diplomacy may be taken as a point of entry into the complex web of questions surrounding the iconographies, cultural appropriations and definitional instabilities of Asia. 3
ASIA ASSEMBLE is a three-day gathering of artists, curators, academics and arts institutions from around Asia in New Delhi. Structured as a series of conversations, screenings and artist presentations, Asia Assemble seeks to understand the possibilities, modalities and urgencies of arts and cultural work around Asia in 2017. In our individual, collective and organisational capacities we continue to understand and negotiate our local, national and continental conditions to respond to immediacies in a largely ambiguous Asia. Khoj enters this conversation from the perspective that Asia has never been purely self-delimited, but rather the product of interaction with other regions. New imaginations of Asia are not an affirmation of Asiacentrism but rather an attempt to overcome a logic dominated by egocentrism, exclusivity, and expansionism. We ask: Where is the ‘silk’ in the New Silk Route? In an era of neoliberal govermentality, resurgent nationalism, and ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’, can we find possibilities of coexistence and communication in other Asian structures? How do the arts, receiving funding sometimes from states, sometimes from regional bodies, from international organizations and multinational corporations, play into existing and emergent structurings? Through conversations, Asia Assemble aims to provide a platform to share challenges, explore connections, discuss strategies and exchange ideas to collectively speculate on new frameworks for our times. Even as archaeologists continue to identify a wreck believed to have belonged to Zheng He, what fantastical fleets do we need to find ourselves on to traverse these strange waters? 4
17 NOVEMBER
PROGRAMME
10:00 am - 10:20 am
TEA
10:20 am - 10:30 am
WELCOME BY POOJA SOOD,
Director, Khoj International Artists’ Association
10:30 am - 11:30 am
OPENING FRAMEWORK: THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF IMAGINING ASIA by Patrick Flores (Philippines) Discussant: Gayatri Sinha (India)
11:30 am - 1:30 pm
SESSION I MIGRANT EARTH: MOVING PEOPLE, CHANGING PLACES Speakers: CAMP (India), Gridthiya Gaweewong (Thailand), Khoj (India), KUNCI Cultural Studies Centre (Indonesia)
Moderator: Aman Sethi (India) Multicultural Asia is a product of migration. Vectors of forced and voluntary migration stretch across economic, political and social structures, war and genocide; housed in impermanence, employed in unstable workshops, in-between populations have forever been in search of legitimacy. What is home then but a construct of the mind revisited in many tangible and intangible manifestations? An image of home, google maps, a suitcase of belongings, local TV channels, food kitchens and songs, ephemera of an ever-grow-
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* Programme is subject to change. Please check website for latest programme.
ing cultural imagination and recollections of a past left behind. Art collective CAMP, curator Gridthiya Gaweewong, Khoj and KUNCI Cultural Studies Center will look at migration, othering, legitimacy, internal and international diasporas and the negotiation of public and private spaces through their artistic and curatorial practices.
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
LUNCH
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
SESSION II SEE
A LINE THE BIRDS CANNOT
Speakers: Haeju Kim (South Korea), Reem Fadda (Palestine), Iftikhar Dadi (Pakistan; via Skype) Moderator: Geeta Kapur
(India)
Borders demarcate belonging and claiming, marking and and separation. Between borders and borderlessness lie people, their claims and sentiments associated with ‘their’ land. A line that the birds cannot see, but one that restricts the amphibian to the tyranny of paperwork and ‘rites’ of passage, has come to reflect even more strongly in times of global refugee crisis. Curators Haeju Kim, Iftikhar Dadi, and Reem Fadda contemplate memorialisation, borders, the state of borderless-ness and art histories of conflict, separation and nation building.
* Programme is subject to change. Please check web site for latest programme.
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18 NOVEMBER
10:00 am - 10:20 am
TEA
10:20 am - 11:45 am
SESSION III A BELT, AND A LONG ROAD by Ashish Rajadhyaksha (India) Artist Presentation by Jegan Vincent de Paul (Sri Lanka)
11:45 am - 12:00 pm
BREAK
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
CONCRETE CABLES AND CODES: ARTISTS ON INFRASTRUCTURE AND POWER
12:00 pm
Artist Presentation by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (South Korea)
12:30 pm
Artist presentation by Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore)
1:00 pm
Discussant: Ashish Rajadhyaksha (India) Emergent architectures and infrastructures have given rise to new spaces for expression as well as regulation. Social critique transmitted through fiber optic networks permeating land and sea has created larger ‘Umbrella’ networks for satires to play and voices to be heard.
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
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LUNCH
* Programme is subject to change. Please check website for latest programme.
Programme 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
SESSION IV ‘WHO SINGS THE NATION STATE?’ Panelists: Amar Kanwar (India), Cosmin Costinas (Hong Kong), Yawnghwe Office in Exile (Burma / Belgium), Shilpa Gupta (India) Moderator: Sabih Ahmed (India) Borrowing Butler and Spivak’s characterisations of language, politics and belonging as key features of the times we live in, the conversation will feature Amar Kanwar, Cosmin Cosminas, Shilpa Gupta and Yawnghwe Office in Exile who through their practice will look at themes that arbitrate statelessness and the state of exception, the Chinese claim, agency and how regional identities replace nationalism.
* Programme is subject to change. Please check website for latest programme.
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19 NOVEMBER
Programme
10:30 am - 11:00 am
TEA
11:00 am - 13:00 pm
SESSION V LINES ONE CANNOT SEE, BUT MUST NOT CROSS Panelists: Zoe Butt (Vietnam), Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam (India / Tibet), Shubigi Rao (Singapore) Moderator: Patrick Flores (Philippines) Over the past decade personal and collective freedoms have been challenged across the globe. This soft limiting has created larger questions around invisible red lines of restrictions, enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality and the constant surveillance of the digital eye and algorithmic frisking. Through their artistic, curatorial, filmmaking and writing practices, Zoe Butt, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam and Shubigi Rao will speak about subversion, surveillance, toeing the line and creating charades to tell difficult tales in their regions.
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1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
CLOSING COMMENTS
1:30 pm
CLOSING LUNCH
* Programme is subject to change. Please check website for latest programme.
PARTICIPANT BIOS Aman Sethi Aman Sethi is a journalist and author of A Free Man. He writes about the interactions between labour, capital, technology and markets.
Amar Kanwar Recent solo exhibitions of Amar Kanwar’s work have been held at the Marian Goodman Gallery, London and Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden (2017), Goethe-Institut Mumbai (2016) and the Assam State Museum with KNMA, Delhi and North East Network (2015). In 2013 and 2014 at the Art Institute of Chicago; Yorkshire Sculpture Park and TBA21, Vienna. Kanwar has also participated in Documenta 11, 12,13 and 14 in Kassel, Germany (2002, 2007, 2012, 2017). Amar Kanwar has been the recipient of the 2017 Prince Claus Award, 2014 Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change by Creative Time; an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, USA (2006); the Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art, Norway (2005).
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Ashish Rajadhyaksha Ashish Rajadhyaksha is an independent cultural theorist. He has written and published widely on the area of Indian cinema, India’s cultural policy, and on the visual arts. He is the co-editor (with Paul Willemen) of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (published in 1999 and 2001 by the British Film Institute). His books include The Last Cultural Mile: An Inquiry into Technology and Governance in India (2011) and Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (2009). He has curated a number of film and art events, including (with Geeta Kapur) Bombay/Mumbai 1991-2001 for the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis (2002) and You Don’t Belong (China/Hong Kong, 2012/13)
CAMP CAMP is a transdisciplinary studio was founded in 2007. Following the group’s interests in thresholds of authority and property, and questions of infrastructure and distribution, their artistic practice is characterised by hands-on technological experimentation and new forms of spatial and historical exploration. CAMP’s long-term projects include the pad.ma and indiancine. ma online archives; Wharfage, a five-year project on trade in the Western Indian Ocean; ROADS, a five-year research project on roads and ideas of connectivity in South Asia with a group of anthropologists; a new space R and R located in an urban resettlement colony; among other gatherings and inventions that are hosted at their home base in Bombay.
Ashok Sukumaran co-founded CAMP in 2007.
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Cosmin Costinas Cosmin Costinas is the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong. He was co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014-2015), Curator of BAK, Utrecht (2008-2011), co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010), and Editor of documenta 12 Magazines (2005– 2007). At Para Site, Costinas oversaw the institution’s relocation to a new home in 2015 and curated: Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs (with Inti Guerrero, 2016-2017); Creative Operational Solutions (with Prem Krishnamurthy, 2016-2017); Afterwork (with Freya Chou, Inti Guerrero, and Qinyi Lim, 2016-2017); The World is Our Home. A Poem on Abstraction (with Inti Guerrero, 2015-2016); Sheela Gowda (2015); the conference Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The new performance turn, its histories and its institutions (with Ana Janevski, 2014). He co-authored the novel Philip (2007) and has contributed his writing to numerous magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world. Other curatorial projects include After the Final Simplification of Ruins: Forms of historiography in given places, Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, VitoriaGasteiz (2009) and Like an Attali Report, but different: On fiction and political imagination, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2008). Costinas lives and works in Hong Kong.
Gayatri Sinha Gayatri Sinha is an art editor, critic and curator. Her primary areas of enquiry are in gender and iconography, media and the study of classical texts. She is the founder of criticalcollective.in, India’s first web based archive and news magazine on art. As curator she has worked with photography and video art from archival and contemporary sources. She has edited Voices of Change: 20 Indian Artists (2010), Art and Visual Culture in India 1857- 2007 (2009); Indian Art: an Overview (2003) among others. She has lectured widely on Indian art, including the Tate Modern, MoMA New York, Tate Britain, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, National Museum, NGMA, Delhi, etc. 12
Geeta Kapur
Photo: Navjot Altaf
Delhi-based critic, curator. Her essays are extensively anthologized; her books include Contemporary Indian Artists (1978); When Was Modernism (2000); Critic’s Compass: Navigating Practice (forthcoming). A founder-editor, Journal of Arts & Ideas; former advisory member, Third Text and, currently, ArtMargins; trustee and advisory editor, Marg. Curatorial projects include: ‘Dispossession’, Johannesburg Biennale (1995); ‘Bombay/Mumbai’, Century City, Tate Modern (co-curation, 2001); ‘subTerrain’, House of World Cultures, Berlin (2003); ‘Aesthetic Bind’, Chemould, Mumbai (2013-14). Jury member: Biennales of Venice (2005), Dakar (2006), Sharjah (2007). Member Asian Art Council, Guggenheim; Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; advisory board Tate Research Centre: Asia. Visiting Fellowships: Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi; Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
Gridthiya Gaweewong Gridthiya Gaweewong founded arts organization Project 304 in 1996, and is currently Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok. Her curatorial projects have addressed issues of social transformation confronting artists from Thailand and beyond since the Cold War. Gaweewong has organized exhibitions and events including Under construction (Tokyo, 2000 2002), Politics of Fun at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, (Berlin, 2005), Saigon Open City in Saigon, Vietnam (2006-07) (with Rirkrit Tiravanija) and Unreal Asia, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2010), and The Serenity of Madness, Survey of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s works, MAIIAM Contemporary Art
Museum, Chiangmai (2016).
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Haeju Kim Haeju Kim is a curator based in Seoul and is currently vice director of Art Sonje Center, Seoul. She has organized exhibitions and performance programs with an interest in body, movement, memory and its way of recording. Kim curated Moving / Image (Seoul Art Space Mullae 2016, Arko Art Center 2017), The Society of choreography (Nam June Paik Art Center 2015), Once is not enough (AVP 2014) and Memorial Park (Palais de Tokyo 2014 as part of Nouvelles Vagues) among others. She worked as a researcher at the National Theater Company of Korea (2011-2012) and as an assistant curator at the Nam June Paik Art Center (2008).
Ho Tzu Nyen Ho Tzu Nyen makes videos, installations and theatrical performances, often working with historical and philosophical texts and artefacts. His work has been presented at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, 2017); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2015); DAAD Gallery (Berlin, 2015); Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2013); Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2012); the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); Artspace (Sydney, 2011); Tate Modern (London, 2010); the 6th Asia-Pacific Triennial (Brisbane, 2009); the 1st Singapore Biennale (2006) and the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale (2004). His feature and medium length films have premiered at Cannes Film Festival (2009) and the 66th Venice International Film Festival (2009). His theatrical works have been presented at the Asian Arts Theatre, Gwangju (2015); Wiener Festwochen (2014); Theater der Welt (2010); the KunstenFestivaldesArts (2006, 2008). He is born, and lives in Singapore.
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Iftikhar Dadi Iftikhar Dadi is an artist and art historian broadly interested in the relation between art practice in the contexts of modernity, globalization, urbanization, mediatization, and post-colonialism. He has authored numerous scholarly works, including Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia. Curatorial activities include Unpacking Europe at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Lines of Control at Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. As an artist, Dadi works collaboratively with Elizabeth Dadi. Their practice investigates popular media’s construction of memory, borders, and identity, and the productive capacities of urban informalities. Dadi is an associate professor in Cornell’s Department of History of Art.
Jegan Vincent de Paul Jegan Vincent de Paul is a PhD candidate at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His dissertation examines the Belt & Road Initiative and its impact on the ethnic conflicts of Burma, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. His background is in architecture (University of Toronto) and visual studies (MIT). He has worked as a researcher and designer with artists and cultural organisations, including Ai Weiwei, LOT-EK, Nakba Archive, Voices Beyond Walls and MIT.
KUNCI Cultural Studies Centre Nuraini Juliastuti is a co-founder and member of Yogyakarta-based KUNCI Cultural Studies Center. Her research focus is situated in between arts, alternative cultural production, and media culture.
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Patrick Flores Patrick D. Flores is Professor of Art Studies in the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. He was one of the curators of Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art in 2000 and the Gwangju Biennale (Position Papers) in 2008. Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006); and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). In 2013, he convened the conference “Histories of Art History in Southeast Asia” in Manila. He curated the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
Reem Fadda
Photo: Sofia Dadourian
Reem Fadda is an independent curator and art historian. From 2010 to 2016, Fadda worked at the Guggenheim Museum as Associate Curator, Middle Eastern Art, Abu Dhabi Project. From 2005 to 2007, Fadda was Director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA), Ramallah and served as Academic Director for the International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah, which she helped found in 2006. She has curated many international exhibitions and biennials, including Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al Quds) at The Palestinian Museum, Birzeit (2017); Not New Now, 6th Marrakech Biennale, (2016) and the United Arab Emirates National Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale (2013). Fadda was awarded the eighth Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement in 2017, and she received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University in 2008. She is based between Amman and Ramallah.
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Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have been making films together for more than 30 years. They have made several award-winning documentary films and a number of video installations. Their documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009), won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival. They also made the Tibetan feature film, Dreaming Lhasa (2005), executive produced by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Gere, which premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Their video installations have shown at Contour Biennale, Busan Biennale, Mori Art Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna) and Khoj Studios (Delhi), among other places. They are also the directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, which they founded in 2012 and is now one of India’s leading independent film festivals.
Sabih Ahmed
Photo: Anusha Yadav
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Sabih Ahmed is a Researcher at Asia Art Archive (AAA). He has led various research initiatives pertaining to modern and contemporary art in India that include digitisation projects of artist archives, creating digital bibliographies of vernacular art writing, and organising conferences and workshops. In 2016, Ahmed worked as a member of the Curatorial Collegiate of the 11th Shanghai Biennale curated by Raqs Media Collective. He is based in New Delhi, where he has been a Visiting Faculty in Ambedkar University’s School of Culture and Creative Expression.
Shilpa Gupta Shilpa Gupta has had solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OK Center for Contemporary Art in Linz and Arnolfini in Bristol, Lalit Kala in New Delhi and most recently at ‘My East is Your West’, organized by the Gujral Foundation in Venice in 2015. She has participated in biennales in Berlin, Lyon, Gwangju, Havana, Yokohama, Liverpool amongst others. Her work has been shown in Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Kiran Nadar Museum, Devi Art Foundation and Mori Museum.
Shubigi Rao Artist and writer Shubigi Rao’s interests include archaeology and neuroscience, libraries and archival systems, histories and lies, literature and violence, ecologies and natural history. She is currently visiting public and private libraries and archives globally for Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, a decade-long film, book, and art project about the history of book destruction. Publications include Written in the Margins (2017), Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, Vol. I of V (2016), History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul (2013). She was featured in 10th Taipei Biennial (2016), 3rd Pune Biennale (2017), 2nd Singapore Biennale (2008), and Singapore Writers Festival (2013, 2016).
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Yawnghwe Office in Exile Sawangwongse Yawnghwe was born in a Shan State Army camp in northern Burma. Exiled from an early age, he lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand until he emigrated to Canada with his family at age twelve. After university in Canada, he moved to Tuscany, Italy, where he studied in the studio of Heinrich Nicolaus. His work has been featured in Kamarado, curated by Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Clark House Initiative Bombay 2014; Body Luggage by Zasha Colah & Kunsthaus Graz for Steirischer Herbst 2016; Jerusalem Show VIII: Before and After Origins, Qalandiya International, Jerusalem, by Vivian Ziherl; Dak’Art 2016 by Sumesh Sharma; and Hong Kong’s Para Site residency. In 2017, Yawnghwe founded the Yawnghwe Office in Exile in Amsterdam. Currently appealing the rejection of his residency permit application by Dutch immigration authorities, he divides his time between Chiang Mai and Amsterdam, where his partner and child live.
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is yhchang.com. Based in Seoul, YHCHI has done their signature animated texts set to their own music in 26 languages and shown many of them at some of the major art institutions in the world, including Tate, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Whitney Museum and New Museum, New York. Young-hae Chang (KR) and Marc Voge (US), the two principals of YHCHI, were Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Creative Arts Fellows.
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Zoe Butt Zoe Butt is a curator and writer committed to the building of critically thinking, culturally conscious communities. Currently she is Artistic Director of The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Previously she was Executive Director and Curator of Sàn Art in Ho Chi Minh City (2009-2016); Director, International Programs, Long March Project, Beijing, China (2007-2009); Assistant Curator, Contemporary Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia (2001-2007). Her curatorial referral work is anchored in the Asia-Pacific region, working with private collectors, researchers, independent curators and major museums globally. Zoe is member of Asian Art Council, Solomon R.Guggenheim, NYC; Asia 21 Young Leaders, Asia Society, NYC and in 2015 became a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
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ABOUT KHOJ INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS’ ASSOCIATION
Khoj International Artists’ Association is a not-forprofit contemporary art organization based in New Delhi, which provides physical, intellectual and financial support for artists and creative practitioners. Through a variety of programs including workshops, residencies, exhibitions, talks, and socially engaged projects, Khoj has built an international reputation as an outstanding alternative arts incubation space. Since its inception in 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 advancement of alternative, interdisciplinary, and critical contemporary art practice in India — constantly challenging the established thinking about art and art making. By bringing together a diverse range of artists and art practices, Khoj aims to facilitate change and awareness of vital global issues and concerns through active and engaged audience participation Khoj aims to connect creative practitioners and catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration and experimentation to create new possibilities of art and art-making. It also seeks to build networks and informed audiences who engage critically with contemporary art in India. In its uncompromising commitment to support creative thinking by building an institutional infrastructure in India for making, exhibiting and researching contemporary art, Khoj is creating a unique legacy for the future. 21
ABOUT SHER-GIL SUNDARAM ARTS FOUNDATION The Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF), set up in the year 2016, seeks to enable conjunctions of artistic and cultural practice that deal with historical memory and build expectations for the future. It commits itself to advancing creative independence, and art that is secular, non-sectarian, cosmopolitan. It will work in solidarity with initiatives addressing marginalized and heterodox practices.
ABOUT THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION BELLAGIO CENTER The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center supports the work of scholars, artists, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners from a wide diversity of geographies, sectors and disciplines, and has a rich history as a convening space for critical crossdisciplinary and international discourse. Through a combination of four-week residencies and one-week conferences, the Center enables the advancement of critical dialogue, thinking and action that promotes the well-being of humanity throughout the world. www.rockefellerfoundation.org/our-work/bellagiocenter 22
KHOJ TEAM POOJA SOOD, DIRECTOR PROGRAMMES Mario D’Souza Mila Samdub Radha Mahendru
Aditi Chauhan (Khoj Fellow 2017)
ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE Manoj VP Zubin Ekka Suresh Pandey Laxmi Devi
Arun Chhettri Manohar Bhengra
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to Dr Leonhard Emmerling, Director Programmes South Asia, GoetheInstitut / Max Mueller Bhavan, and his team, Farah Batool, Kanika Kuthiala, and Shweta Wahi.
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Khoj International Artists’ Association, S-17 Khirkee Extension New Delhi, 110017 India
(+91) 11 65655873/74 (+91) 11 29545274
khojworkshop.org interact@khojworkshop.org