Peers 2013 - an exhibition of artworks by five recent art graduates and post graduates from all over India at KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension > 19th-21st June 2013

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Time : 11:00 am - 7:00 pm

Entry : Free

Place : KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi - 110017

Venue Info : khojworkshop.org | Nearest Metro Station - 'Malviya Nagar(Yellow Line)'

Area : Saket

Event Description : Khoj International Artists’ Association presents Peers 2013, bringing together artworks by five recent art graduates and post graduates from all over India.  
This is the tenth edition of the Peers Residency which is an annual education and outreach residency programme that brings together five recent graduates from art institutions all over India. For four weeks, these young artists shed the expectations and rigidity of a structured curriculum, working together in a discursive space that stresses the role of free experimentation and risk-taking in art practice.
Says Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj: “Ever since its inception, the Peers residency has become one of the most important programmes at Khoj. Khoj provides digital laboratories, extensive research archives and the opportunity to engage with a larger artists’ community, some of whom participate in a mentor’s role during the residency. The Peers artists are encouraged to move out of the physical environs of the studios and explore the area and its community”.”
The artists for the PEERS 2013 residency are Juhikadevi Bhanjdeo, Pratik Bhattacharya, Parag Sonarghare, Sashi Thavudoz and Niyati Upadhya. The critic in residence for the PEERS 2013 residency is Shaheen Ahmed.

Says Shaheen Ahmed, critic in residence for Khoj Peers 2013: “The five young contemporary artistes at the Peers Residency have been involved in an intimate engagement with various elements such as identity, personal politics and of course the cityscape. Parag Sonarghare is engaging in a dialogue with an inanimate object like wheat flour (atta) for a sustained period of ten days whereby the identities of two diametrically polar opposites have become extremely fluid. Here one doesn’t know where one is an extension of the other. Niyati Upadhya has carried forward her negotiations with the subaltern city spaces by her work with the street performers in the Shadipur Depot and the constant engagement that she has had living in Khirki Village. Pratik Bhattacharya has titled his work as ‘Presence of Absence’ which is a strong commentary on the state of being of a citizen in a city like Delhi and questions the presence and state of the voice of the citizens in a milieu whereby politics seem to dominate the everyday. Shashi Thavudoz again questions the state of urban living trying to make a rupture into the ‘organised chaos’ of the cityscape. His is an attempt to question the boxed state of being that has come to signify what city life is. Juhikadevi Bhanjdeo is working with two distinctly different materials – synthetic ribbons and steel blades. But however she is building in a sense of uniformity between these two different materials through the usage of the color white. Her work which also talks about scale and spatiality is her dialog with the gender issues which is a major social phenomenon in Delhi.” 

Juhikadevi Bhanjdeo has received both her BVA and MVA from the M.S. University in Baroda.  She has been part of several group shows, including the Red Earth gallery in Vadodara and was an artist-in-residence in the Glenfidditch residency in Dufftown in Scotland. Although she was formally trained in painting, she actively experiments with fabric and installations.

Pratik Bhattacharya was born in 1988. He did his graduation & post graduation in the field of painting from Kala-Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, in 2010 and 2012 respectively. He received a National scholarship from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India in painting in 2011. His practice actively makes use of a variety of media including painting, multimedia & interactive installation. He has participated in several exhibitions, workshops and art camps throughout the country including the National Camp at Sillon in Feb 2011, organized by Lalit Kala Academy and the Pune Biennale in January 2013.

Sashi Thavudoz was born in Hyderabad, and has received his Bachelors and Masters in Visual Arts from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda. Thavudoz’s interest in the arts began with drawing, the medium through which he began his explorations with form and space. Through his experiments with drawing, he has evolved a minimal and monochromatic aesthetic but has ventured into experiments with a variety of materials and mediums.

Niyati Upadhya graduated with a degree in visual arts from Rachana Sansad, Mumbai. Though formally trained as a sculptor, she has repeatedly found herself turning to photography as a chief mode of expression. Since her graduation, she has spent close to two years travelling and working on a variety of projects (both individual and for clients) that have evolved out of her practice at art school. Having grown up in a home of artists, musicians and other inclined to creative pursuits, a keen sense of observation and curiosity has become second nature, and her  most recent preoccupation has been with documenting the ‘professional underbelly’ of the  typical Indian city – whether it’s the scrap dealers of Bangalore or the kaan saaf wallahs, ear  cleaners, of Bombay. Her curiosity about capturing the murk and quirks of dubious old vocations  that lie at the fringes of cities like Mumbai, addressing odd bodily needs, quietly but firmly, finally  led her to explore the lives of The Bone Setters and then The Barbers, which forms the main  subjects of her current body of work.

Parag Sonarghare has received his BFA in painting from Govt. Chitrakala Mahavidyalaya Nagpur University, Nagpur and an MVA in Art History and Aesthetics from M.S. University in Baroda. Originally from Nagpur, Parag has begun to evolve a practice that explores the crossings and connections between painting and performance.

The critic-in-residence Shaheen Ahmed graduated with a Masters in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2012 and has received her under graduation degree in English Literature from Fergusson College, Pune. She also has a Post Graduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. She has dabbled with both the print and broadcast forms of journalism, but her interest has always been in arts and culture. Although writing remains her first love, she is beginning to experiment as an arts practitioner. She is interested in using her body in performance, while simultaneously blending it with audio-visuals.  A big cinema buff and bibliophile, Shaheen loves sci-fiction books, graphic novels and comics.

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