Serendipity Arts Residency 2023

The sixth edition of Serendipity Arts Residency Open Studio brings together a constellation of forms and practices of six resident artists who, under guided mentorship, have created independent projects that reflect the currents of interaction, introspection, and immersion of contemporary realities.

These voices have taken the form of installations, immersive performances and videos that will be on public view from October 7 to October 16 at Serendipity Arts Foundation, Defence Colony.

The Open Studio marks the culmination of the three-month-long residency programme during which the artists engaged in a series of engagements in the first month.

It was followed by guided mentorship in the next month, and a subsequent period was dedicated to the production of their projects. Through discussions, talks, workshops, studio visits, and screenings, the artists interacted with cultural practitioners.

The curator-in-residence, Shivani Kasumra describes the outcome of the immersive Residency as “the multitude of practices and forms that unravel the realities of the world we inhabit”.

“The Open Studio will be presenting the residency as an ecosystem of practices, where the artists – across multiple mediums and themes – have metabolised their ongoing consideration on the slow yet steady unravelling of our world,” says Kasumra.

Not limiting themselves to any medium or form, the six artists-in-residence developed a spatial relationship with the surroundings.

Trained as a visual artist Richa Arya has stitched scrap metal with metallic wires to create the installation ‘I Sew My Life Against My Own’ which explores the enduring struggles of female migrant labourers in Delhi. Artist Salman Bashir Baba has created a dreamscape that represents the chaotic qualities of dreams with the play of light and shadows in his immersive work titled ‘Each Night Puts You in Our Dreams’.

Dileep Chilanka, a movement practitioner and performance-maker, celebrates the sturdy framework of wooden planks found across shops in rural Kerala in ‘Nerpala’. Artist Sewali Deka has created a life-size installation ‘A Big Trap’ that offers a sharp critique of the romanticized notions of the countryside.

Sound artist Surbhi Mittal aka pale blue dotter has woven a narrative of a possible future where humans have an averted climate crisis with the help of machines. But now the machines have identified birds as their enemies, who will be executed. Her 20-minute sound piece titled ‘Free Bird’ offers a poignant farewell to these birds.

In the work of French artist, Massandje Sanogo, who joined the Residency as part of the Villa Swagatam Initiative, in partnership with the French Institute in India, her preoccupation with gaze becomes the primary lens of her video-photo installation “If I was a GOAT, pt. I”. The work features the voices of the African diaspora who share their experiences of living in Delhi.

When: October 6 -7

Where: Serendipity Arts Foundation, Defence Colony