This panel will bring together artists who have founded cultural spaces that aim to engage local communities in the arts. Jagannath Panda and Premjish Achari, who run the Bhubaneswar Art Trail, Malini Kochupillai and Mahavir Bisht, editors of the Khirkee Voice, and Christopher Cozier, who conducts a residency programme at The Alice Yard in Trinidad, will take part in this discussion. Tasneem Mehta Zakaria, from the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, will moderate.
Jagannath Panda is an artist and sculptor who is inspired by his native Orissa and his current home in the rapidly-burgeoning suburb of Gurgaon. His works reflect on India’s transition in an era of intense urbanisation and appear in many museums around the world including Asian Art Museum in Japan, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Fine Art Museum in Chandigarh and the Devi Art Foundation, National Gallery of Modern Art and Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi. Panda also co-founded the Bhubaneswar Art Trail.
Premjish Achari is a curator, writer and translator based in Delhi. He recently curated the exhibitions Workers and Farmers: The Panorama of Resistance (Prelude) at Khoj International Artist’s Association in May 2018 and co-curated the public art exhibition Navigation is Offline as part of the Bhubaneswar Art Trail 2018. He has received a number of awards and fellowships, including the Inlaks: Take on Art Travel Grant for Young Critics in 2016, the Khoj Fellowship for Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) in 2017, and the Art Scribes Award by Prameya Art Foundation in 2018. Achari is currently the Director-Outreach at Art1st Foundation and serves as a Visiting Faculty member at Shiv Nadar University, where he teaches art history and theory.
Malini Kochupillai is the co-editor of Khirkee Voice, a community-led bi-lingual magazine. She is also an independent photographer and urban researcher based in Delhi. Her work revolves around the socio-urban condition of the city’s neighbourhoods and the people that inhabit them. Using photography and community engagement as tools to explore, and perhaps transcend the many schisms that affect a city’s life, she is interested in creating projects that lead to a more egalitarian and inclusive lived experience of the everyday.
Mahavir Singh Bisht is an experienced visual consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the photography and visual arts. Bisht is skilled in design, photography, video production and storytelling. He graduated from AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, he is co-editor of Khirkee Awaaz. Mahavir’s currently a visual communications Coordinator at ETASHA (Enabling and Training Adolescents for Successful and Healthy Adulthood) provides market-oriented employability and vocational skills to disadvantaged Indian youths.
Christopher Cozier is a writer, curator and artist who works across mediums — from drawing and printmaking to video and installation. Based in Trinidad, he is also a co-coordinator of Alice Yard, a space for creative experiment, collaboration, and improvisation. Cozier was a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of The University of Trinidad & Tobago from 2006 to 2010, and a key contributor to the seminal Caribbean journal of art criticism titled Small Axe. In 2013, he was also a recipient of the prestigious Prince Claus Award.