About KAF Residency
The KAF residency is a yearly residency program that focuses on providing a space for local and international mid-career artists and writers to develop their practice in a non-studio and non-urban based setting. Each residency will consist of 4 artists, 1 writer and will be advised and guided through the residency by our curatorial advisor.
The residency takes place in Jangalia Gaon a small village in Uttarakhand, set in the foothills of the Himalayas. The aim of running a month long residency here, is to create an environment that nurtures and helps develop each practice in the midst of peers and an off-beat setting. The mountains also provide a space of learning and unlearning, of being together and of building sustained networks and relationships that will reflect the vision of the Foundation as supporting the development of the art scene in India on a Global scale.
Each residency is structured according to the practices of the artists and writer so that each person benefits from their time being together. The curatorial guidance also helps navigate important questions and the development of each practice individually and also in connection with the others.
KAF Residency Outcome
July residents then showcase the research produced from the residency in the following July at Exhibit 320. This gives an opportunity for the work, to develop and be accessed by a public while the next round of the residency begins simultaneously. It also allows for a period of time, with continued consultation with the curator and KAF to happen during the year post residency to translate the experience into a body of work or works in progress.
KAF Artists/Writer
1. Yasmin Jahan Nupur:
“I am inspired by the urgent ecological and community/public aspects and inclined to incorporate these elements in my work. I also like to depict human relationships from various points of view. Therefore, I work closely with people from the community who are deprived from social benefits. I believe in equal rights for all people regardless of gender, race, colour, creed or political belief, and in the individual‘s inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic processes in framing the society in which he or she lives. People need to communicate and even confront each other and I believe that our inner self has the potential of making us better humans. I can share my culture and values and a collective participation with the community can increase understanding between people of different backgrounds. My work explores prevailing social values of my region.”
2. Indu Anthony:
Indu Anthony is a visual artist based out of Bangalore, India. Born and raised in a conventional Indian family from Kerala, India, she overcame various social obligations to pursue her forms of expressions. She has hence been working with individuals from the fringes of the society. She is known to explore tonalities of inward discussions which later on bursts out into the communal spaces. Her work comprises of understanding feministic stands which gives way to performances and installations.
3. Kumaresan Selvaraj:
Kumaresan Selvaraj’s Sculptures in wood, cement, paint and paper gently erupt and await to overflow from within its surface as a poignant calling to our inner existential conundrums. In his series of sculptures Selvaraj employs an aesthetic of spillage, something from within is always making its way out. Selvaraj was awarded the Lalit Kala Academy Research Scholarship, 2010 Chennai. His works have been shown in Apparao Gallery, Chennai/New Delhi in 2008, Veda Gallery, Chennai in 2014, Exhibit320, New Delhi in 2015 and 2016. Art Hauz Chennai in 2017 and Dharti Residency show at Serendipity Art Festival Goa 2017. Kumaresan Selvaraj lives and works in Chennai.
4. Kaushik Saha:
Saha's oeuvre has always had landscapes as the major theme, landscapes that are often barren, churning, and undulating. The landscapes painted by Saha have no vegetation but are pockmarked. They are rarely what they appear at the first glance. Saha makes use of narrative art that he learnt about in Baroda. His narratives are generally about common people and literature.
5. Deepa Bhasti:
Deepa Bhasthi is a writer based in Bengaluru, India. She is one of the co-founders of Forager Collective, which consists of a writer and artists interested in investigating into issues and ideas that are changing and shaping the politics, culture, physical geographies and socio-economic structures in the contemporary world. One of the ongoing projects of the Collective is The Forager magazine, an online journal of food politics, which Deepa edits.