Ayesha Singh of Art Chain India, Poornima Sukumar and Sadhna Prasad from Aravani Art Project, Kriti Sood of LAND (Learning Through Arts, Narrative and Discourse) and Shilo Shiv Suleman of Fearless Collective speak about the importance of peer-to-peer and independent support groups, and realising our personal agency in creating spaces which have the power to bring about change. This conversation will be led and moderated by independent curator and arts educator, Shaleen Wadhwana.
Ayesha Singh is an artist and the co-founder of Art Chain India(ACI)- a digital community for artists, driven by the potential for localised assistance and commonalities to create global solidarities within artist communities. Singh’s personal practice subverts socio-political hierarchies and highlights the assertion of established systems of power in architecture through video, sculpture, installation, performance and drawings.
Kriti Sood is an Art Educator based out of New Delhi and Simla. She is the Founder and Director of LAND, Learning through Arts, Narrative and Discourse, a visual arts education and curation consultancy. She is presently working as a visual arts expert for NalandaWay foundation, an art education expert for Devi Art Foundation and Sankriti Kala Kendra, New Delhi. She has mentored exhibitions and education programs at various universities, such as Ashoka University, St Stephens College at Delhi University, Sri Aurobindo Centre of Arts and Commerce and Jindal Global Law School, designed art education programs for numerous schools in New Delhi and Kashmir, led teacher training projects for special educators working with students with intellectual disabilities and teacher training programmes for Tech Mahindra Foundation, ‘Art for well-being’. Along with this has created art based interventions for various care homes around Delhi. She is on the committee for Sovereign Asia Art Prize, Hong Kong as a nominator.
Poornima Sukumar is the founder and director of the Aravani Art Project. For the last decade she has worked on many projects with various communities and across different social issues and continues to do so with the Aravani Art Project. She loves spending time travelling, documenting people and stories from the moon to the beaches. Aravani Art Project aims to create a collective space with the people from the Transgender community by engaging them into public art and other interventions. The collective examines their spaces, places of history, innovation and create a room to learn by transforming their inputs into work of art.
Sadhna Prasad is the Art Director at the Aravani Art Project. She has been an illustrator and muralist for the last 5 years where she transforms her strong sense of colour and form to walls. She is interested in every form of artistic expression and is constantly exploring. Aravani Art Project aims to create a collective space with the people from the Transgender community by engaging them into public art and other interventions. The collective examines their spaces, places of history, innovation and create a room to learn by transforming their inputs into work of art.
Shilo Shiv Suleman is an award-winning Indian artist whose work lives and breathes at the intersection of Magical Realism, Art, Nature, Culture, Technology, Feminine Energy and Social Justice. She is the founder and director of the Fearless Collective- a movement in replacing fear with love in public space. Over the last few years, she has worked with communities across the world in 12 different countries by facilitating and leading public art interventions with indigenous communities in Brazil, refugee and migrant communities in Beirut, queer activists in South Africa and transgender activists in Pakistan and more. Her work with Fearless has led her to represent her pioneering approach of Art and Peacebuilding at the Global Forum of Democracy, Stockholm Institute of Peace, United States Institute of Peace and be covered by a range of international media including National Geographic and more. Fearless intends on growing into a movement of hundreds of south-asian artists reclaiming public spaces through participative storytelling.
Shaleen Wadhwana is an independent curator and arts educator. Her curatorial practice explores meta-narratives in global history and artistic responses to contemporary social issues. This is reflected in her upcoming exhibitions in 2022: The Sindhu Project: An Enigma of Roots at Exhibit 320, Delhi, The Second Responder at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai. She has also co-designed India’s first virtual artist residency with the Pollinator Interdisciplinary Lab. Recently, she curated IMMERSE, an emerging artists exhibition as part of a pro bono collaboration with Young Art Support, Carpe Arte, and Somaiya Vidyavihar University, Mumbai. She teaches Big History and Design Futures at MITID Pune and is their Humanities curriculum designer. She is academically trained in Art History (SOAS London), Cultural Heritage Law (Geneva-UNESCO), Liberal Arts (Ashoka University), and History (Delhi University). Recently, her research has been showcased at The Unfiltered History Tour by Vice World News at the British Museum, London.