Five young artists who have recently graduated from their respective art schools participated in the annual Peers residency programme hosted by Khoj International Artists’ Association. Their works will now be on display at the Khoj Studios.
Themes
The artists, through their chosen mediums, have explored subjects like urban safety, racial discrimination, migration and other issues faced by people living and visiting Khirki Village, the area that surrounds the Khoj Studios.
The five artists are Arijit Bhattacharya from Surat’s Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, who is looking to create art that is functional yet thought-provoking; Anuradha Upadhyay from Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) in Baroda, who has worked on the way the African and other communities are perceived in Delhi; Smita Rajmane from Shiv Nadar University, who has mapped the Khirki mosque area to talk about “boundaries and being the outsider”; Manojit Samanta from Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata, who has created a jigsaw puzzle on cardboard to unravel the maze-like socio-economic fabric of Khirki area; and Manipur’s Johnson Kshetrimayum from MSU, who has delved into his own personal history of being racially abused and depicted the discrimination through poignant wall illustrations.
Johnson said his work is an extremely personal comment on racial discrimination.
He talks about incidents of abuse and torment he faced as a student in wall-based drawings and illustrations. “I was called everything — from ‘chinky’ to ‘chowmein’. I was even slapped and beaten up.”
Anuradha said her work deals with what she calls “the gaze”.
“I come from a conservative family and one issue that concerns me is how women are perceived in our society. Khirki as a venue has many possibilities. It’s such a multi-cultural place with so many expressions. I wanted to create various types of ‘gazes’. While working at Khoj, what also interested me was how the African communities are looked at.”
