Image from Tejal Shah's performance, 'SLEEP' at the Performance Art Residency Open Day at Khoj Studios (2004)

Given that India boasts a rich and fertile tradition of dance and theatre, it is interesting that the move towards performance in the contemporary visual arts had not yet been as a welcomed or fluid transition within the arts in India. Thus, the 2004 International Residency at KHOJ explored an art form that continues to raise eyebrows and throw up questions about the nature of contemporary visual art practice. The artists in residence from Jakarta, Belo Hori Zonte, Brazil, Amsterdam and Mumbai came from diverse backgrounds, ranging from theatre to studio-based performance. It was an intense period of working together and exploring notions of the body, materials, space and time. Describing Tejal Shah's performance, SLEEP, as critic-in-residence for the Khoj Performance Arts Residency (2004, Hemant Sreekumar states-- “Tejal [Shah]'s Performance entitled Sleep had her strung out on a hammock outside the window of her first floor studio holding a cord connected to a hammock placed in the middle of the room where the audience was expected to lie down one at a time. Right above the interior hammock was a projection bounced off from a 45-degree mirror with the projector on the floor. The footage was beamed directly, constructing associations with multiple female identities within the context of a common task as it had shot footage of women sleeping, mumbling, and singing with their head on the pillow. This footage was edited into a loop and projected on Tejal's body.... and the entire procedure was then shot from a stationary camera on a tripod. Beautifully constructed and composed in the unlit studio space ... the only light was ambient, filtering in off the street casting a larger than life shadow of Tejal across the projection.”