At the Turn of the Tide

At the turn of the millennium, Khoj led an experiment in Indian contemporary art practice through its model of experimental, process-led international workshops. At its helm have stood three of its founding members – Anita Dube, Bharti Kher and Manisha Parekh – three women artists who have challenged established thinking about art in India; charting new territory, they have gone on to become some of India’s most recognised contemporary artists both with South Asia and beyond.

The Modinagar workshops broke fresh ground for Dube’s emerging artistic practice. At the first workshop in 1997, the former art critic tapped into a burgeoning impulse to create visual art.

As Khoj’s foremost scribe, Anita Dube formulated its one and only manifesto; writing in the first Khoj catalogue in 1997, she states: “Our aim was to function as an experimental art laboratory that would bring artists together from different parts of the country, from the subcontinent and from around the globe, setting up a co-operative, non-hierarchical work situation where dialogue, exchange and transfer of information, energy and skills could take place as intensely lived experience.”

In 2011, Dube was one of the artists invited to be part of the Khoj Marathon - a series of public interviews held by Hans Ulrich Obrist in collaboration with Khoj. The Marathon, part of a series of events conceived by Obrist at Stuttgart in 2005, was a milestone that initiated one of the most exciting conversations around art in contemporary times. The Khoj Marathon was the first of its kind to be held in the subcontinent.

Over the years, Anita Dube has been an incredible mentor and bastion of support for Khoj. During the annual Peers student residency programme, Dube continues to challenge and provoke young artists, inviting them to subvert and challenge the establishment. She continues to be the voice of the experiment at Khoj by encouraging process as practice, ensuring that the vision of Khoj as a collaborative laboratory for the arts continues to live on with the same vigour that it began with at Modinagar.

Anita Dube was a participant at Khoj’s symposium, ‘Psychoanalysis and the Arts in India’ in 2011. 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.

Bharti Kher, reflecting on the need for an autonomous space like Khoj stated in 2015 : “... Art is about ideas and that’s what I think Khoj stands by. This is one of few spaces in India where anyone in the larger space of the art world can call home. I’m very proud to be part of its history. We don’t achieve everything we wish and there are mistakes but the fact that our artist friends support us means that something resonates with them... ”

In 2002, Bharti Kher was a part of the first residency held at Khoj's new premises in Khirkee Village. It was here that Kher produced 'The grass is always greener and searching for roots', forming the first set of images for her 'Hybrid' series.

In 2013, Bharti Kher 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. Utilizing the common form of the mirror, Kher 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 her work, Kher continues to harness the power of the transformative, creating ‘radically heterogeneous work which encompasses painting, sculpture and installation.’ Her hybrid syllogisms synergise myth and modernity, housed within female figures that confront the viewer with a sexual monstrosity; garbed in the fact of consumerism and consumption, Kher’s characteristic chimeras at once animated and trapped by the bodies they inhabit. 

Overarching themes within Kher’s work include the notion of the self as a multiple and culture’s openness to misinterpretation. Kher exploits the drama inherent in objects, tapping into mythologies and diverse associations a thing can bring. As she states in an an interview with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist held during the Khoj Marathon in 2011 artist, the bindi, especially, is a transformative device, bridging the gap between the figurative and the abstract within her own practice.

Manisha Parekh graduated with a degree in painting from the Royal College of Art in London, after which she participated in a series of international workshops, returning to Delhi in 1997 to help set up the Khoj international workshops at Modinagar : “Khoj 1997 was a fantastic experience. Some very exciting works came out of that workshop. It was the first time we all came together for such a project, and the artists were able to use the resources of Modinagar, the former estate of the Modi family in Delhi. One of the most rewarding aspects of the workshop for me was that we went in with nothing and tried to make something. This is what I continue to explore in my practice even today.”

Parekh participated in ‘Ideas of Fashion’, the art and fashion residency held at Khoj in February 2011, imbuing the residency with the eye of an experienced artist.

Born and raised in Baroda, Gujarat, Parekh’s own practice follows from her influences at the Baroda School. Parekh’s exquisitely crafted work traverses the boundaries of media; utilising painting, collage and drawing, she creates work that is at once geometric and organic in its form. As a member of the Khoj Board, Manisha Parekh continues to be a source of support and guidance. 

A bastion of support since Khoj’s inception in 1997, Parekh generously donated her works, ‘Bloom’ (2011) and ‘Through the Key-Hole’ (2011) for the ‘Gift for Khoj’ sculpture and drawing portfolios respectively. 

As Khoj continues to grow, so will its founding members. In the face of change, the room afforded by Khoj, and the legacy established by its foremost female architects - Anita Dube, Bharti Kher and Manisha Parekh will continue to shape the forms, ideas and practices of artists and practitioners across generations in India and beyond.