Five fresh art graduates display quirky pieces on life in the city

Khoj International Artists’ Association is showcasing Peers Emerging Artists Show 2017, an exhibition of multi-media artworks (photographs, videos and sculptural installations) created by five recent art graduates handpicked by an eminent jury at Khoj Studios.

The artists are Ashish Dhola Sahil Naik, Sagar Shiriskar, Tanaya Kundu and Vrishali Purandare. The Critic-in-Residence is Ashmita Chatterjee.

This the 14^th edition of the Peers programme, where artworks are created over a period of a four-week residency at at Khoj Studios, New Delhi and one that provides emerging artists a unique platform for dialogue, experimentation and exchange.

Mario D’Souza, curator at Khoj says: “Peers has been one of Khoj’s pioneering programmes and continues to create a network of young artists from various art, architecture, media and design disciplines and put them in spaces of interaction with the larger creative community. This year, Khoj invited artists and art educators Arunkumar HG, Gigi Scaria, Rakhi Peswani and Rohini Devasher as the Peers 2017 jury.”

A filmmaker, cinematographer and photographer based in Mumbai, Sagar Shiriskar has been photographing a “katib” (a person who writes documents or traditional calligrapher), in Old Delhi’s Urdu Bazaar, who is one of the few remaining practitioners of the dying art form. “I met this 55-year-old who still writes certificates in beautiful calligraphy and what attracted me to Ghalib was that he is the only remaining person doing this work.” Sagar is also working on a short film on the same subject that he will display as a single channel projection.

25-year-old Sahil Naik grew up in the largely undisturbed state of Goa in the temple town of Ponda frequented by pilgrims from all over. Bomb threats/hoaxes around the temple peaked an interest in the idea of the “bomb” that was otherwise always seen as a form of entertainment (fireworks) and festivity in the context of the temple celebrations. The vulnerability of this temple site often commanded safety drills should there be an unforeseen attack involving sections like “dealing with unattended objects”, “on finding explosives”, “bomb defusal” etc. He has created a Tower of Babel like sculpture, a miniature Khirkee model, using foam, sunboard, wood and corrugated sheet to create a narrative for abandonment based in a game of rumours and Chinese whispers much like the story of the tower where the changing language severed communication leading to the fall of man and his ambition. “I am imagining this neighborhood as a quarantine zone or a lazaretto, where I am creating a scaled miniature sculptural model referencing a catastrophe that only lives as a story now and the site lives an afterlife of decay.”

28-year-old Tanaya Kundu’s practice is response against the oppression she has experienced in her life. From a very young age she was silenced each time she raised her voice against the inequality she faced at home. “My feminine identity was always treated as a disadvantage and something to be controlled by the patriarchal power. Since I predominantly deal with my feminine identity, it is inevitable that issues and taboos related to women will surely be a part of my concern.”

Vrishali Purandare, 27, chooses clay as her medium to create a sculptural work. She says: “Molding clay feels like molding the skin and the flesh. For this project, she built a circular hollow clay structure around her own self that she will then break out from.

The youngest artist Ashish Dhola, 23, has created a sensor-controlled kinetic mic that turns in the direction of a viewer on its own. “The idea is that whenever one person begins to start a political discussion, whether in metro, bus, train or even roadside, others join in too even if they are strangers. That is the power of politics.”

The show is on view at  S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi upto 25 June.