Delhi’s Serendipity Arts Residency’s Open Studio invites audiences into evolving artistic journeys shaped by memory, experimentation and dialogue.
In an age when art is increasingly consumed through fleeting images and hurried encounters, the studio remains a space of slower revelation. It is where ideas take shape through uncertainty, where materials resist easy conclusions, and where the process of creation can be as compelling as the work that eventually emerges from it. The Open Studio of the Serendipity Arts Residency 2026 offers audiences an opportunity to enter precisely such a space—one animated by experimentation, research, dialogue and the freedom to take creative risks.
From August 1-7, the Serendipity Arts space in Delhi’s Defence Colony will become a site of artistic discovery, presenting the work of six emerging practitioners who have spent the past three months developing new projects under the Foundation’s annual residency programme. Now in its ninth edition, the Residency has steadily evolved into an important platform for artists seeking the time and critical support to move beyond the pressures of conventional exhibition-making.
The 2026 cohort brings together Gopinath Kshetrimayum, Vanshika Rathore, Smiha Kapoor, Nirmal Mondal, Pratik Anil Sutar and Josefina Paz, who is participating through Villa Swagatam, the French Institute in India’s residency programme. Their artistic languages are distinct, but the works share an underlying concern with the ways knowledge is inherited, preserved, fractured and continually reimagined.
Memory, in this context, is not a fixed archive. It lives in landscapes and materials, in oral traditions and mythology, in the gestures of labour, in collective acts of care and in the movement of people across geographies. The artists draw from these reservoirs to create works that are deeply rooted in specific histories while remaining open to contemporary questions of identity, belonging and social change.
“The Residency has always been about creating the conditions for artists to think deeply, experiment freely and build meaningful connections across disciplines,” says Shefali Munjal, CoFounder and Patron of Serendipity Arts. “What audiences encounter at the Open Studio is not simply a finished body of work, but the outcome of three months of sustained research, dialogue and artistic risk-taking.”
That emphasis on process gives the Open Studio its particular vitality. Unlike a conventional exhibition, where the artwork often appears as a final and self-contained statement, the residency showcase allows viewers to encounter ideas while they are still evolving. The visible traces of research, experimentation and revision become integral to the experience.
For Gopinath Kshetrimayum, the starting point is Pebet, the seminal theatre work by the celebrated Manipuri playwright and theatre practitioner Heisnam Kanhailal. His project, Rupture and Return, examines the ways systems of power reshape identity through the erosion of memory. Through a new body of abstract oil paintings, Gopinath explores fragmentation, erasure and reconstruction as visual languages through which histories of conflict, psychological transformation and resilience can be negotiated.
Vanshika Rathore turns her attention to the natural world, particularly the ecological landscapes that often escape everyday notice. Her immersive sculptural installation, Imprints of the Living Earth, draws upon close observations of soil, waterways, insects, tree bark and other natural textures. Working across terracotta, ceramics, cement, brass, resin and wood, Rathore creates a material vocabulary that reflects the interconnectedness of ecological life.
The act of making also becomes a means of preserving women’s histories in Smiha Kapoor’s When the Thread Begins to Turn. The project draws from the Punjabi tradition of Trinjan, communal gatherings where women spun cotton while sharing songs, stories and experiences. Through performance, installation, sound and participatory practice, Kapoor explores collective memory, feminist knowledge systems and care.
Nirmal Mondal similarly investigates the power of inherited narratives, turning to Bengal’s mythology and folk traditions to examine how stories shape collective memory and social identity. Through ceramics and material experimentation, his installation considers the ways folklore continues to influence ideas of community, belonging and hierarchy in contemporary society.
Pratik Anil Sutar’s project is rooted in the histories of craft, labour and migration. Building on his family’s legacy of blacksmithing and carpentry, he has created sculptural works using found materials collected from Delhi’s repair workshops, markets and informal settlements. Through acts of collecting, repairing and reconstructing, Sutar draws attention to the social histories embedded within ordinary objects.
The idea of belonging acquires a linguistic and sonic dimension in Josefina Paz’s To Hum Is To Home. Presented as part of the Villa Swagatam exchange, the project brings together drawing, textiles, sound, installation and performance to explore language, migration and collective identity.
“Each edition of the Residency reminds us that meaningful artistic growth emerges through exchange, collaboration and sustained inquiry,” says Smriti Rajgarhia, Director of Serendipity Arts. “The 2026 cohort has developed a remarkable body of work that reflects both individual perspectives and the richness of a shared creative environment.”
The Open Studio will also include artist walkthroughs, performances, workshops and conversations, enabling visitors to engage more deeply with the ideas informing the projects. These programmes reinforce the central philosophy of the Residency: art is not merely an object to be viewed but a field of exchange—between artists and audiences, materials and memories, histories and possible futures.
*Murtaza Ali Khan is an award-winning cultural critic, jour-nalist, and academic. A jury member for the 69th & 70th National Film Awards, he has covered entertainment for The Hindu, The Sunday Guardian, and The Quint since 2008, with over 2,000 TV appearances as a media expert. He is also a film festival curator, translator of Hindujas and Bollywood, and a NET qualified journalism educator.
