About the Event

An intensive presentation by artists, followed by a moderated discussion by Premjish Achari, Curator, KNMA, on the impact of a singular image in their artistic thinking, research, and practice. When images dominate our everyday lives, and they vanish as soon as they appear, artists delve into a detailed and slow thinking about their experience with a single image that had a profound impact on their personal and artistic lives.

The conceptual inspiration behind this programme is to examine the important, often affective and emotional influence of the singular image upon the thinking and artistic practices of the artists. It expands the scope of the singular image and argues that a visual artifact – encountered on a social media feed, found in personal archive, glimpsed on street, captured as a screenshot, or found within a book – holds immense potential to impact the artist, irrespective of where it came from and its original context.

Through this series of discussions, we will find answers to curiosities and enquiries such as why a particular image captivates us or demands our attention. Through the exploration of the personal, emotional, or intellectual connection that forms, these sessions invite artists to share their own experience of the specific, often unintentional details within an image that haunt or affect the viewer personally move beyond the general, culturally coded layers of the image.

These discussions also engage with the “micro-processes” through which an encountered image is internalized, analyzed, mediated, and represented in the individual artist’s conceptual framework. We document the journey of the image from being a visual stimulus (external world) to the interior mind and its return into the world of art.

In this era of proliferation of images and also when machines are making images, we propose a critical counter-practice where each artist selects and focuses intensively on one singular image. This intensive approach questions the culture of superficial, rapid image consumption. We position the depth of impact against the dominance of exposure, proposing the importance of developing sustained reflection as a practice amidst the visual chaos.

Our objective is to offer the audience, art students, scholars, etc., insights into the early stages of artistic thinking. By highlighting the specific pull of the selected image, the session also attempts to demystify inspiration, instead emphasizing a process rooted in observation, personal impact, and critical engagement with images and the visual ecology. Through these sessions, we are aspiring to elevate the world of everyday images (also ephemeral images like memes, personal photos, infographics, etc.) as important sources for artistic research.

Speakers: Divya Singh, Artist
Lokesh Khodke, Independent Artist, Comics Creator, and Arts Educator
Murari Jha, Visual and Performing Arts Practitioner
Moderated and Conceptualised by Premjish Achari, Curator, KNMA

Bios:

Lokesh Khodke

Lokesh Khodke is an independent comic maker, artist, illustrator, and an art educator based in Delhi, India. Lokesh is currently working as Director Education at ArtFirst Foundation where he leads the organization and the team that takes the art based pedagogical approaches to the schools across India through teacher's training programs and creating an engaging art curriculum for the children from 2 year to 16 years of age group. He has published several comics books with different publishers and comics magazines, among them some are written and illustrated by himself, and he has also illustrated comics for other authors. He has illustrated several children’s books, been published by various publishers, and done several exhibitions of his artworks in India and abroad. He is one of the co-founders of BlueJackal (www.bluejackal.net), a collective that publishes comics and organises related workshops/programs. As an educator, he has taught art in educational institutions, including universities, and several organisations, across varying age groups.

Murari Jha

Murari Jha is a visual and performance art practitioner currently based in Delhi. Born in 1988 and raised in Maunbehat in the Darbhanga district of Bihar, he completed his BFA from Patna University in 2010 and his MFA from B.R. Ambedkar University, Agra in 2012. Primarily working with performance art, Jha activates the spatial mechanics of the stage to create performative creatures. His transmedia practice explores the concept of the body and self, examining how they exist simultaneously as subject and object. Jha's work delves into personal resistance within the frameworks of ‘micro power,’ striving to understand the correlation between personal and collective struggles. Through his performances, he seeks to bridge the gap between individual experiences and broader social dynamics, highlighting the interconnectedness of personal and communal resistance. Key presentations include the solo exhibition Baggage from The Longest March at Nature Morte (New Delhi, 2023); Returning to Earth – A Kinder Search for Home, co-commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (2022–2023); Samay Pahaad Ho Gaya Hai, a live art performance at Dutch Warehouse, curated by HH Art Spaces in collaboration with the Kochi Biennale Foundation (2022); Machaan, conceived for Five Million Incidents at the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan (New Delhi, 2020); Fondle at Mumbai Art Room (2018); Good Sleep at UNIDEE Residency, Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 2017), supported by Inlaks; The Lane at Theertha International Artist Collective (Colombo, 2017); Barrow, an installation-cum-durational performance curated by HH Art Spaces for the Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa, 2016); Touch Everything for the exhibition Future Collaboration at the Italian Cultural Centre (New Delhi, 2016); Bhumi, presented at the invitation of Clark House at Mithila Bhavan Akhara (Ayodhya, 2016); Body, Structure & Space- residency at 1Shanthiroad (Bangalore, 2015); and In Between at Crack International Camp (Kushtia, Bangladesh, 2013)

Divya Singh

Divya Singh (b. 1995) is a visual artist, who lives and works in New Delhi, India. She completed her BFA from College of Art, New Delhi and her MFA from Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh. Her practice is primarily rooted in painting and explores themes such as isolation, experience, memory and mortality – emanating largely from a poetic engagement with Time. Mediums such as photography, writing, cinema and painting are at the centre of her language as a practitioner and have featured as important categories of both work and interest. These varied elements come together within the work and can be seen most distinctly in the artist books made by her, as well as in found imagery which accompanies the paintings and other media during exhibitions. Singh had her first solo, Notes for Tomorrow in 2021 with Shrine Empire. She has participated in many national and international exhibitions and Art Fairs. She is a recipient of the Space 118 Fine Art Grant (2021) and was awarded the “Young Artist of the Year Award” (2022) as part of the first edition of HELLO! India Magazine’s “India Art Awards”. Singh was a resident with Foreign Objekt’s (Online) Posthuman Lab (Artist Research Residents 2022). Her recent projects engage with matters concerning Decolonial Imagination, The Matrixial, and Spirituality. Two of her Posthuman Visual Art Projects as part of her artistic research are:

Tachyon (2021) and Ender/Terminarch (2022-2025) available for viewing on the Posthuman Art Network website and platforms.