The 2006 Peers at Bharti Kher's studio

PEERS is a 4-week residency program for recent graduates from art colleges across India, initiated with support from the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), which provides an opportunity for exchange and dialogue. The PEERS program hopes to create a regular forum for experimentation, development, and critique within an alternative educational framework. PEERS 2006 brings together a diverse group of students from across the country onto a common platform, that works to provide an opportunity for open knowledge sharing within the group and the community.
Khoj invites the following artists and critic for Peers 2006: Artists-In-Residence: Atanu Pramanik; Atul Mahajan; Lalit Bhartiya; Surabhi Saraf; Thara Thomas; Critic- In – Residence: Bhooma Padmanabhan. As a forum that aims to actively push the envelope of contemporary art practice mediated through practices that foreground qualities of experimentation, invention, research and critical debate, KHOJ positions PEERS as a model for practice as research within the ambit of the visual arts. The PEERS program hopes to create a regular forum for experimentation, development, and critique within an alternative educational framework. KHOJ provides an opportunity for a diverse group of artists to test their work within a setting that is part public, part private. The residency practices an investigative approach that is open-ended and enigmatic, it celebrates a diverse scene of artists all responding in different ways to each other and to the site/building. This rather more speculative approach to the production of art results in a distinct educational experience which foregrounds improvisation, reworking and allowing room for mistakes. Beginning with Atul Mahajan (Baroda), whose interactive works are incomplete without the viewer’s participation. Atanu Pramanik (Santiniketan) whose trained as a printmaker but has begun moving into the realm of installation and mixed media. Lalit Bhartiya (Delhi) a sculptor from Jamia Millia Islamia, works with metal rods twisted into ribbed human forms. Surabhi Saraf (Ahmedabad) a painter whose background in classical Hindustani music and Kathak led naturally into audio-video installation works with a strong sense of performance and Thara Thomas (Bangalore) whose interest in shifting the boundary between public and private has led to an exploration of the relevance of art in public spaces” Exhibition Note, Peers Residency Open Day (2006)