Politics and aesthetics joined hands at Serendipity Arts Residency 2023

A work by Surbhi Mittal at 2023 Serendipity Arts Festival residency.

Entering one of the rooms at the exhibit of the Serendipity Arts Residency 2023 in Panjim, Goa, one is struck by a feeling of entrapment on seeing a life-size bamboo structure with sound and light as accompaniments. The installation, a work by Assamese artist Sewali Deka underlines the captive quandary of tea-estates and the region’s continued marginalisation.

Deka is one of the six artists who was part of the three-month residency program earlier this year which provided them with the resources to develop their practice and interact with the broader art community in New Delhi. Curator-in-residence Shivani Kasumra worked with the artists including Deka, Salman Bashir Baba, Surbhi Mittal, Richa Arya, Dileep Chilanka and French artist Massandje Sanogo – the latter as part of the Villa Swagatam initiative in partnership with the French Institute of India and the Embassy of France in India – and curated the Open Studio at the end of the residency.

A work by Sewali Deka at 2023 Serendipity Arts Residency.

At the display of their works at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa which came to an end yesterday, the one thing that stood out was the artists’ concerns with the world around them and the multidisciplinary approach they had towards them. Sound artist Mittal who thrives at the intersection of music and arts, imagines the last aviary left in the world because the machines have wiped off the species from everywhere. In I Sew My Life Against My Own, Haryana-based Arya has stitched sheets of scrap metal repurposed from mass-produced oil tins and is inspired by the migrant women labourers who toil their lives away in the handloom industry.

‘I Sew My Life Against My Own’, a work by Richa Arya at 2023 Serendipity Arts Residency.

Kasumra, a researcher and writer based out of New Delhi, who curated the residency believes that her aim was not to try and unnecessarily impose a framework on these works which have a disciplinary variety at the level of concerns and conceptual approaches, but to help the artists join the dots. “Through all these works, you get access to an artist’s meditation on how gradually our world is getting untethered. These works are operating on a slightly higher conceptual level. They are pertinent in many topical ways but the residency is also a space to experiment and get resources to develop a concept which is conceptually rigorous and does not have an immediate end goal which is commercial,” she says.

‘Each Night Puts You in Our Dreams’, a work by Salman Bashir Baba at 2023 Serendipity Arts Residency.

The slow unravelling of the present-day world can also be seen in Kashmir-based visual-practitioner Baba’s work Each Night Puts You in Our Dreams. Elaborating on his expansive work which encompasses sound, projections and fragrance, the artist shares that stress and anxiety due to political situations would always end with an intense phase of dreaming and nightmares for him which he would journal. “After some time, I delved into what other young adults dream about/of Kashmir; to see what kind of visuality exists in their minds. And this work is the result of that research and engagement,” he says, adding that he has explored his interests in technology and used light, video and sound to materialise and manifest these oneiric episodes in some tangible form. “Using a trans-medial approach helps me to create sensorially rich experiences and has been a part of my practice,” he explains.