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Khoj International Residency August - September 2002
Through the Khoj International Residency, Khoj wishes to support and incubate experimental creative practices that are across disciplines and are looking at art and its various intersections such as gender, urbanisms, ecology and technology.
About this edition
In this edition of the International Residency at KHOJ, the participating artists explored image-making, autobiography, material practice, gender and the gaze.
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Mithu Sen refers to her image-making as a process that has evolved through being opposed to the inorganic. The choice of medium and the process of making the image has often bordered on being autobiographical when placed in the public sphere. Using skills (embroidering, stitching etc) akin to and identified as art made by women, Mithu engages the viewer in a dialogue about self / identity / race / origin within a gender polemic.
Roslisham Ismail works towards making the image in a site-specific manner through an aesthetic that is commonplace and located within the city space; the voices that layer Malaysian society permeate through his work. Living spaces, restaurants, and the subway are places where paths cross and the idea of a nation is made. Ise sees himself as an author/artist whose table of contents is made when engaging with a site.
Jimnah Kamani works with various media such as glass, metal, oil. He works without a preconceived idea and instead enjoys watching the image unfold as a day-to-day observation of Kenyan society. The meanings constructed through the image-making process are subjective. Reflecting upon his process, he believes that his expressive form was fully realised when he began exploring metal and glass as mediums.
Masooma Syed’s earliest works were painted with a layer of a familiar past through the repositioning of photographs and cutouts from print material on anything other than a canvas. It is in the process of displacing the image from the frame that she started to make objects which layered and referenced multiple narratives, representative of society both in the past and the present. She addresses gender and the gaze through her practice.
Sumedh Rajendran’s earliest works began as a study into the past. He reworks the image by treating it like a fragment from an Islamic arched doorway or a metaphor such as a headless horse. He incorporates the act of making the image into the clay form. In the course of moulding and shaping the object, he arrives at a new meaning and interpretation. The process of copying/redoing/imprinting/reworking renders new histories visible in his artistic practice.