Counterpoise: Nine Women Artists at KHOJ

As a part of Khoj's series on women in culture, this exhibit will follow the work of nine seminal artists -- Mithu Sen, Navjot Altaf, Pushpamala N, Rohini Devasher, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Sonia Khurana, Tejal Shah and Zuleikha Chaudhari -- charting their trajectory within Khoj itself.

Simultaneously provocative and attractive, Mithu Sen’s work is populated by representations of body parts, animals, plants and objects that come together to form witty commentaries on gender, sexuality and contemporary life and society. Sen’s artistic practice is dominated by the relational aesthetic of gift-giving; the process of which performatively brings the audience and the artist together as a part of the work.

'Free Mithu' first began in 2007 when Mithu Sen advertised a summer dhamaka, inviting friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to send a letter of love in exchange for a free artwork by her in a medium of their choice. In 2009, Sen debuted an exhibition of the items collected over a period of two years at Khoj. Presented as a performative event, the exhibition included the letters received, and the distribution of individual gift-wrapped work made for each participant.

“Mithu, enclosed within the vacuum (and limitless possibilities) of an empty room, began to see how the constant creation and re-creation of identity through clothing also represented a basic human nature to enquire beyond visible exteriors towards a core. Here, the peeling/shedding of each layer to reveal the next explains the motivations of exploring life as a continuous process of showing us something new. [...]'” - Critic, Mayank Mansingh Kaul on Mithu Sen’s work, ‘Foreplay’, at the Ideas of Fashion residency (2011)

In 2013, Mithu Sen participated in ‘We are Ours: A Collection of Manifestos for The Instant’, an exhibition that housed 27 manifestos created by contemporary Indian artists whose practices are founded on a conceptual and philosophical engagement with the ways we live within forms. Sen responded to curator, Himali Singh Soin’s call for work that was a simultaneous symbol of the dawn of industrialisation and its demise in the face of a digital revolution.

In 2014, Khoj held the landmark exhibition, “WORD.SOUND.POWER.” as part of a curatorial collaboration with Tate Modern, London. As curator, Andi-Asmita Rangari notes,  “WORD.SOUND.POWER. is about the poetics and politics of voice. It is about the formation of an utterance in relation to the norm, and how, in the process, a voice raised can also be understood as an act of poesies, a creative and aesthetic process that incorporates critique. A particular concern that runs through its themes is to interrogate the inherent privilege in being allowed to voice dissent, reflected in cultural echoes—through art, music and poetry”

As part its ongoing fundraising initatives, Khoj invited ten artists to donate work for the Christie’s India Sale in 2014. Mithu Sen generously donated ‘In Transit (6)', a work from a series which combines water colour, ink printed fabric, velvet and images from her drawings.

Navjot Altaf is an artist who has been working in and outside of Mumbai since the mid-1970s. Altaf has worked across media, the range of which includes painting, sculpture, installation and video. With site-based projects in public spaces that affirm and reveal the nature of the human condition, Altaf’s diverse body of work is both discursive and abstract in its approach, but is ultimately singular in its concern.

Altaf was a part of the 2006 Public Art Residency at Khoj, the aim of which was to expand the definition of public art beyond public artifact by exploring the role and context of art and its audiences within the urban environment. As an artist not native to New Delhi, Altaf chose to situate her project, “DELHI LOVES ME?” around the vicinity of Khirkee and Hauz Rani, activating Khoj’s neighbourhood with a site-specific public art intervention.  

The public art residency, ‘In Context: Public.Art.Ecology’ sought to address the dialogic relationship between public art interventions, audiences and themes of environment and climate change. Khoj invited Navjot Altaf to participate in the project in its 2010 edition, the result of which was the production of the work, 'Barakhamba'.

'Nameless Here Forevermore' was an exhibition held at Khoj in 2015. Bringing together artistic practices that beg reflection on our implication in collective suffering, be it political, economic or environmental, the show addressed our inability to respond to the wounds of collective trauma, exploring thus, the possibilities of art as a tool of resistance, remediation and rejuvenation.

In 2015, Khoj convened a meeting reflecting on the five years since the inception of its Negotiating Routes project in 2010 bringing participants from all 5 editions of the project together as part of a forum for dialogue, exchange and reflection. Negotiating Routes was a public art grant given to 19 projects across India investigating issues of ecology, environmental degradation and the displacement of local communities. Given her experience in this field, Altaf was invited to be a respondent in the meeting. 

In 2016, Khoj celebrated the launch of 'The Thirteenth Place: Positionality as Critique in the Art of Navjot Altaf'. Authored by cultural theorist and curator Nancy Adajania, the book is the first major-length study of the artist's work. Altaf and Adajania, in conversation with artist and critic, Ravi Agarwal addressed a fully packed courtyard, unpacking the impact of Western feminist art discourse, politics, anthropology, and activism in the artist's work.

Beginning her career as a sculptor with an interest in narrative figuration, Pushpamala N transitioned into casting her own body as various characters and personae through the medium of photo-performance. Pushpamala’s work engages with postcolonial theory and feminist historical gaze via ‘photo-romances’ and studio photographs that seduce viewers through their spectacular and elusive narratives. In recent years, Pushpamala has seen the expansion of her photographic practice, delving into experimental short films, live performance and sculptural tableau. 

2001 welcomed the second edition of the international residency programme at Khoj. Restricted to video and photography, the artists lived and worked in the KHOJ guesthouse that belonged to photographer, Pablo Bartholomew. 

For the second edition of KHOJLive (2012), Pushpamala N performed 'Motherland' along with poet and writer, Mamta Sagar. During the 6-day festival, the duo explored the idea of freedom and captivity through the work of the first Kannada woman writer and nationalist, Nanjangud Thirumalamba.

A member of the initial programming team, Devasher’s relationship with Khoj began in 2004. Recalling her time at Khoj in a 2015 interview, she states, "I realised very quickly, very early on, that I was part of something very special because when I started initially, it was very much about the people here… we were taking ownership of things together, and making it happen together…. It was that, which was the most exciting thing." A career marked by a transition within the arts, Devasher’s award-winning work stands at the threshold of art, science and fiction; her forms pulsate with primordial life, and are simultaneously, precursors to a space of the future.

The 2005 edition of the Peers student residency at Khoj became an opportunity for Devasher to interact with her contemporaries across a wide variety of disciplines and geographies. As residency critic, her interactions with students from a wide cross-section of diverse and distinct Indian art institutions provided a rare insight into contemporaneous ideology and practices, setting the stage for the changes to come within Devasher's own career.

Part of the KHOJLive performance art festival in 2012, Devasher presented the work, ‘Shadow Walkers’. Her chronicle of eclipse chasers -- a subculture of people who are addicted to walking in the shadow of the moon -- is a product of her collective investigation with amateur astronomers in New Delhi. She asks, “How does one create a sense of engagement with someone else’s experiences? Is it possible to be a participant once a work is complete?. As an amateur astronomer herself, Devasher was keen to explore the dual role of the artist as both 'participant' and 'observer'. Shadow Walkers is one vignette within this project.

In 2015, Devasher returned to Khoj for the art and science residency, now in its new avatar as ‘The Undivided Mind: Art and Science Residency’. 

“I began as a documentary photographer and activist, deeply engaged with the women’s movement in Delhi. Across the 1980’s, I built a visual history of the movement within, pointing the camera one moment, shouting slogans the next. I photographed women protesting against rape, dowry, and religious fundamentalism, domestic and state violence. These were important images, necessary images, but ones that, in the very act of interrogating dominant representations, became themselves stereotypes. Angry eyes, raised fist, shouting mouth.” - Sheba Chhachhi, ‘The Khoj Book’

Part of the Photography Residency in 2005, Chhachhi produced ‘Tales from the City’, a series of four objects that bridged the line between a bioscope and a television set. The project was informed by an impetus to turn, as she stated, the photographed object into a ‘pure’ object. Operating atop two electrically rotating motor coils, the ‘objects’ resembled mini television sets through which two vertically parallel coils literally looped photo sequences. The sequences themselves were photographs superimposed and printed onto a transparent plastic, juxtaposing angular, latitudinal satellite images of the city with images of people living on the fringes of the urban metropolis.

Along with Navjot Altaf, Sheba Chhachhi too was a part of the  'Crisis and Un/Making Sense -- Art As Schizoanalysis" (2015) symposium held with the support of the Goethe Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan. In a conversation with curator, Leon Tan and artist, Sonia Jabbar, Chhachhi discussed the fissures, both political and psychological, rife within the landscape of Kashmir and beyond. Through configural worlds, cracked yet bound in/by affective relationship, the book conveys a sense of recursive reflection in the circulation of its images, concepts, concerns by referring to the manner in which little seems to be permanently abandoned within Chhachhi’s work.

“It has been an honour to be associated with Khoj, which is a rare and unique space, deeply cherished by artists. All through its decade and half long journey from a workshop to an institution, Khoj has offered a platform for artists to experiment, and constantly search for ways of looking and understanding their practice, becoming vital to the eco system of contemporary art in the region.” - Shilpa Gupta

Gupta participated in the Khoj workshop at Modinagar in 1999, by reconstructing a dilapidated toilet used by local women grass cutters ; and adding back to back, on its inner and outer wall, a cast of her breast in cement. She adorned the breast with motor wire in the place of hair and playfully added a string of lights found in the local market, in a geometric line. While broken walls were mended, water piped in, the space painted, and two marble slabs with drawings were embedded in the washing area. 

In 2005, Gupta was part of a group of artists who facilitated the Mumbai-based iteration of the Khoj workshop. Taking place at Jindal Vijaynagar Steel Ltd, Vasind, it brought together artists from Bangladesh, South Korea, Germany, Pakistan, Turkey, Sri Lanka, France, UK, Barbados and South Africa, inviting them to work alongside artists from Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Cochin and Kolkata.

In 2011, Gupta contributed an autoportrait to one of Khoj's first fundraising initiatives. Garbed in a camouflage coat, Gupta’s self-portrait refers to her existing interest in the relationship between borders, both political and personal, as entities that decode variances -- blurring the lines of distinction that exist between object and subject as independent entities.

Sonia Khurana is a visual artist based in New Delhi. Working primarily with moving image and performance, her practice includes drawing, text, sound, music, voice, architecture and installation. Khurana’s practice deals with interiority and embodiment; and the self in relation to the world. In a practice where art becomes therapy, she tries to persistently explore and re-define the space of the political within the psychological.

At the 2008 edition of the KHOJLive performance art festival, Khurana debuted her live video performance, ‘Don’t Touch Me When I Start To Feel Safe’. Referring to her work in a 2010 conversation with Sarah Bancroft in The Khoj Book, Khurana describes the development of the piece in 2008, “Sometimes when one thinks of an idea that must be tested, it takes a long time to be comfortable with it. This thing about letting people into one’s own space is new and scary. In a  more recent version of the piece I invited people to come and meet me, one-on-one, in my own living room. The meetings were extremely brief and intimate -- a real contrast to the noisy, busy festival, Khoj Live, they took place in.”

With an interest in art as a therapeutic conversation, Khurana often sees her practice as a mode of therapy, stating in the same 2010 interview, that,”... in performance mode, where I am being with people, I am a mediator for something they might experience in other situations, and that is perhaps one of the roles of the therapist.” Khurana was thus, a fitting presenter at Khoj’s symposium, ‘Psychoanalysis and the Arts in India’ held in 2011 at Khoj Studios. The objective of the symposium was to foster discussions and cross-fertilisation across the analytic and artistic fields, enabling analysts to present contemporary thinking in psychoanalysis on one hand and artists to present artistic theories and practices in India on the other.

In 2016, Sonia Khurana was a part of ‘The Undivided Mind Art & Science Residency’, the theme of which was ‘health’. During the residency, Khurana created an iteration of her ongoing work, ‘missing womb: narratives’, which in her words, “expresses the profound encounter between science and the representation of female reproductive processes.”

Tejal Shah is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working with video, photography, performance, sound and installation. Shah has exhibited widely in museums, galleries and film festivals. In 2003-4, they* co-founded, organised and curated along with Natasha Mendonca, Larzish – India’s premier International Film Festival of Sexuality and Gender Plurality. Having recently come out as an ecosexual, they think of themselves as ‘some kind of artist working on some kind of nature.' (*The artist avoids using personal personal pronouns as an experiment and expression of retirement from gender conformity.)

In 2012, Shah participated at the Khoj Dharamshala workshop. On the edge of the Himalayas, Shah collaborated with a set of artists from across the world, creating ‘Interdependence’, a charged work that addressed concerns about conformism and political subversion via the Tibetan independence movement and its consequent struggle for political independence from the Chinese state.

Shah's work, ‘Between the Waves’ was a part of the 2016 exhibition, ‘Frozen World of the Familiar Stranger’, held in collaboration with KADIST San Francisco. A multimedia installation, Shah’s video and collage articulates sensual, poetic, heterotopic landscapes within which they place subjects that inhabit personal/political metaphors -- embodiments of the queer, eco-sexual, inter-special, technological, spiritual and scientific.

Zuleikha Chaudhari is a director and lighting designer from New Delhi in India. She made a name for herself as a director with stage productions of Ibsen, Brecht and Heiner Müller, among others. In addition, she has worked on several installation projects and has received several prizes for her work. Zuleikha Chaudhari has become a familiar face at Khoj in the last five years, most recently as a part of our gaming and performance residencies. However, Chaudhari’s relationship with Khoj began in 2003, when she was a part of one of the first few iterations of Khoj's international residency programme.

Between 2006 and 2008, Chaudhari worked on a series of projects with Khoj, i.e., ‘Arabian Night’ (2006), ‘On Seeing the 100% Beautiful Girl One Beautiful April Morning’ at KHOJLive (2008) and ‘Propositions on Text and Space’ (2009); questioning the position and role of theatre within contemporary art -- coming to terms with what it means for the viewer to participate and engage with art in an intimate and emotive way.

Chaudhari, along with Tejal Shah was also a part of the Khoj international workshop at Dharamshala in 2012, producing 'Untitled', an architectural sculpture that punctured the clear Himalayan sky with an exacting effervescence.

Chaudhari too, along with Mithu Sen was a part of curator Himali Singh Soin's exhibition at Khoj, 'We Are Ours: A Collection of Manifestos for the Instant'. 

In 2015. Chaudhari was, along with Mithu Sen, a part of the performance residency, ‘The Mrichhakatika Project’. Within the studio spaces of Khoj, the artists created a garden recreating the scene of the crime within Sudraka's Sanskrit play, 'Mrichhakatika' (The Little Clay Cart). Echoing a forensic investigation, not only of the plot of the play but of the idea of performance itself, the project exposed the work of acting and representation. The garden was also a utopia-- a mis-en-scene of contemporary performances that radically moved away from the binary relationship between the performer and the viewer.