Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents I CONTAIN MULTITUDES: A workshop on portraiture and creations facilitated by artist Anish Cherian. This two-day online workshop invites participants to reflect on portraits, characters, narrative, theme, and events in figurative drawings. Through individual and collective drawing exercises, using ideas and techniques in duplication, mark-making, and iconography, the workshop will explore the creation and reading signs or semiotic systems of meaning-making.

This workshop is suitable for those who have basic skills in drawing and are comfortable using digital drawing platforms. Participants will learn and work with Autodesk Sketchbook mobile application, and therefore are required to have a mobile device with the application pre-installed. Participants can also use other drawing surfaces and materials in addition. The sessions will be held on Zoom. Attending both days is mandatory. The workshop has limited seats.

Anish Cherian is a visual and performance artist based in Goa. He uses elements from architecture and modes of production to discuss systems of influence. Through these, he explores the visible and invisible performances of repetitive labor. His works can almost always be traced back to an archive, either personal or public. Yet, it is not the verifiability of the archive that he pursues. Going beyond archival abstractions his practice attempts to revitalize unrecordable memories and affects that are excluded from the archive and by extension the “official” narrative of our reality. He is a recipient of the Legislative Assistant for Member of Parliament Fellowship and resident at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. His drawings are currently part of an ongoing group show at KNMA titled, 'Right to Laziness...No, strike that! Sidewalking with the man saying sorry' curated by Akansha Rastogi.

A space that one occupies, evokes a strong connection and leaves indelible impressions in one's mind. How do we make sense of these places visually with the attachments and emotions we associate with it? During the course of this pandemic we may have been confined to our homes, cities, alternate living spaces, spending time navigating it, that we have now developed muscle memories of that place. We know where each object is kept and have an associated emotion of each room we have occupied. We are able to visualize these spaces with our eyes closed. How do we interpret these places through drawing? Conversely we have yearnings of a place we wish to go to, walk on a particular street, go to our own house, a park, places within our city or our hometown itself. How do we draw the memory of these places and our imagination of them that may morph and adapt the images we have in our minds?

On a macro level if we think about the idea of mapping space, the strongest sentiments are evoked when one deals with issues of identity, where migration, loss, partition and the memories of home or the lack there of and or world events such as political and social changes feeds into the creative process. To channel all of that information, memory and emotion to make work that is poignant and visually provocative is a process of mapping spaces that we will delve into through this workshop by referencing works of artist Zarina Hashmi and her creative process.

Using drawing and collage through memory, maps and image, this 3-day workshop shall use various tools and techniques to distill images of places using imagined, remembered and real references in making an original map or a small series of them. All the sessions will be held on Zoom. Participation on all three days is mandatory.

Materials to be arranged by each participant:
A laptop with high speed internet, Scissors, ruler, old scrap magazine, pens, pencils – 2b, 4b, 6b pencils, charcoal pencil, black craft paper, paper cutter, fevicol, black drawing ink, old paint brush, eraser, A4 or A3 200-300 gsm drawing paper (loose or sketchbook format works), a writing notebook, small water container.

Participant eligibility
Basic skill and knowledge of drawing and using drawing material

Sareena Khemka is a visual artist working in mixed media drawing, painting and sculptural installations. Mapping cityscapes through narratives of its past and the future, her preoccupation with building a research-based practice on the subject has led her to work with several mediums that started with drawing and now includes sculpture and found object. Her current practice explores urban spaces through dichotomous ideas of construction and destruction, preservation and regeneration, man-made and organic environments, creating transformative spaces and objects that recall historical ruins and geological formations that have the potential for material evolution. Khemka holds a B.F.A degree in painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. She has been a part of several group shows across India and has been a resident artist with Space 118, Mumbai and Piramal Art Foundation, Mumbai. She has conducted art workshops with the Art 1st Foundation, Mumbai, Mohile Parikh Center, Mumbai, Sangeet Shyamala, New Delhi amongst many others. The artist currently lives and works in Bangalore.

In the opening sections of More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (1998), Kodwo Eshun emphasizes that sound is a mode of thinking in itself and not merely that which is to be thought about.

Taking off from this concept and diving into the act of ‘fictioning’, the workshop explores possibilities of thinking through listening and transmitting earworms. A field of speculations and counter-speculations is seen to emerge from tuning in to the interstices of sound in existing narratives and apparatus – political, historical, technological and infrastructural. In the process of unearthing these, participants will be invited to a collective investigation into the philosophical and techno-political dimensions of voice, frequency and the audible. We start with a simple inquiry of ‘what does an earworm mean to you?’

The five sessions will delve into the practice of listening as a means of speculation, examining its many sensorial and generative possibilities. From leaning into the disquiet in science-fiction writings to the fictions that are always inhabiting the ‘real’ of the world, this intensive short-module will unpack and unsettle the field of the aural, and attempt to open the question of the ‘sensible’. Participants will collectively engage with the philosophical mediations on ‘listening’ by Jean Luc Nancy and the conceptual artefacts of Kodwo Eshun, while developing conversations around ideas of amplification, resonances, disquiet and acoustic dislocation or displacement across different mediums and technologies.

Intended as a participatory and discursive format, the workshop will follow an exercise-based methodology, along with a series of guest interventions that will catalyse our modes of sonic thinking and making. Participants will have access to a library of earworms specially populated for and during the sessions, viewing and listening materials, resources and readings.

This online workshop is free. Interested participants are expected to commit their presence on all days and undertake some group work between the sessions. The age limit for participation is 18 years and above. The workshop will explore the possibility of further collaborative work towards the end.

Suvani Suri is an artist and researcher based in New Delhi, India. Her interests and inter-media experiments have been tethered to the auditory spectrum, encountering and speculating its multi-fold possibilities. She has been exploring various modes of transmission such as podcasts, auditory texts, sonic environments, installations and live interventions. Alongside she has been actively involved in teaching at several universities and educational spaces.

This is the fourth program of the ‘The Artists’ Way’ series of experimental workshops, organized virtually by KNMA. These workshops are led by practicing artists who have been using workshops as part of their art making process, often collaborating with different groups and forming their own personal, formal and informal networks of learning and unlearning. The series is imagined as an exploratory platform, with part pedagogic intent and infused with new questions, doubts, playfulness and sometimes also involving a collective/collaborative production towards the end of the workshop. The program is part of KNMA Education Outreach, with the focus on artistic research as new pedagogies of the future. Each workshop is unique, different in format, scope and methodology, wherein artists also share their related research. ‘The Artists’ Way’ program is outlined by Akansha Rastogi, with Madhurima Chaudhuri, Neha Tickoo, Rajshree Poonam Gupta and Priya Chandra.

Kiran Nadar Musuem of Art presents a workshop on collagraph printmaking to participants, 18 years and above. Collagraphy refers to the process of taking a print from a collaged textured plate. The term was coined by educator Glen Alps in 1955, who helped in developing this process. This workshop will teach and guide participants to make their own collaged plate and then take a print without using a printing press. The textured surface is made by gluing different materials such as paper, scraps and found objects onto the plate.

The zoom link for the session along with a list of materials that requires to be arranged will be emailed to each registered participant.

This workshop is an invitation to engage in making a reproducible sequential work that involves linear and/ or non-linear narrative. Aided with directives and prompts, participants will be encouraged to explore the emotional architecture embedded in the genre of science fiction and immerse themselves in the possibilities of time-travel, new discovery, sonar communication and extinction among other facets. While engaging with the idea of a book form with diverse potential, the workshop will cover the process of making a zine.

Spread over three intense sessions, of different durations, it is a participatory, hands-on and tactile workshop, exploring zine-making as a form and a medium. With primary focus on the act of making, the program will also look into the possibilities of physical circulation and sharing of zines and expanded publishing through Renuka Rajiv’s own practice. Participation in all three sessions is mandatory and also requires commitment and preparation in between sessions. Preferred age group for participation would be 18 to 50 years old. 15 participants will be selected by artist and workshop facilitator Renuka Rajiv on the basis of interest statements. Further program details, additional material requirements, themes of the zine will be communicated by the artist to all participants via email or telephone prior to the workshop.

Renuka Rajiv has a background in working with paper and fabric primarily. Zines, drawing and personal expressions are central to their practice. They are interested in postal subscription and mailing lists. Currently, they are facilitating a subscription-based zine series involving several wonderful contributors.

Material required (to be arranged by each participant themselves): Paper, pens, colours, adhesive, collage material, any other material, stamps, 5 used a4 sheets that are lying around. Finished zines pages. Adhesive/ stapler/ tape, photocopied sheets, long needle, thread, packing material.

Schedule:

• Session 1: 26 November, Thursday, 4 – 9 pm, Duration - 5 hours
• Session 2: 27 November, Friday, 4 – 6 pm, Duration - 2 hours
• Session 3: 28 November, Saturday, 4 – 8 pm, Duration - 4 hours
  Participants will make parcels of their zines and send them off to fellow participants.
• Session 4: TBD, Date to be mutually decided by the group

This is the third program of ‘The Artists’ Way’ series of experimental workshops, organized virtually by KNMA. These workshops are led by practicing artists who have been using workshops as part of their art making process, often collaborating with different groups and forming their own personal, formal and informal networks of learning and unlearning. The series is imagined as an exploratory platform, with part pedagogic intent and infused with new questions, doubts, playfulness and sometimes also involving a collective/collaborative production towards the end of the workshop. The program is a part of KNMA Education Outreach, with the focus on artistic research as new pedagogies of the future. Each workshop is unique, different in format, scope and methodology, wherein artists also share their related research. ‘The Artists’ Way’ program is outlined by Akansha Rastogi, with Madhurima Chaudhuri, Neha Tickoo, Priya Chandra and Rajshree Poonam Gupta.

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents Mapping Cities, an interactive online workshop to guide participants to create individualized city spaces through the art of collage – making. This workshop is in conjunction to the museum’s recent online exhibition, City Tales: From the KNMA Collection, where artists have drawn inspiration from various socio-cultural and political markers, physical and natural elements found within urban spaces to create their artworks. View the exhibition here - https://www.knma.in/city-tales/

“Remember, the biggest enemy is your own image!,” - Enter the Dragon (1973)

An unpredictable ‘self’ with its limits, scale and stakes is essentially the core of the whole existence; more so in the present situation of the pandemic, when we think of social distancing, immunity and the vaccine.

The question of the self has become central, and a lot relies on our individual behaviour. In this “phantasmagoria of bio-politics”, when only individuals/isolated bodies are safe and ‘other’ bodies toxic or contagious, the vulnerable self seems to be surrounded by its own images. The universe is toxic because ‘I’ do not feel safe outside. Who am I then? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Is this movement a forward? Or a free fall? How do I make sense of this world? Am I an individual/singular entity or part of a large community, collective or conspiracy? What about my roots, learnings, morality, ethics, ethnicity, culture, colour and inheritance? How do I unlearn? Is there a future, I am secured for?

Introducing the self to oneself, to another and to the world/universe is a continuous process, that involves time, thinking and working. Repetitively exercising the act of self-introduction could be one of the ways to preserve the core. Carving out an alter ego and ascending or descending to level after level are other ways to sustain oneself in the game.

Conducted over five days, this online workshop is an artistic inquiry to dig deeper into the idea of the ‘self’. It is participatory, conversation-based and performative in nature. Participants will be provided with the resource material (readings, films etc.) in advance and invited to adapt and work in any medium, including drawing, painting, writing, speech, performance, video or games, to create/destroy their own image.

Facilitated by Paribartana Mohanty, this workshop is a continuation of his long-term project ‘Game for Artists and Artists’ Communities’ that focuses on labour, exploitation and resistance in the creative fields, and developed in different intensives at Botin Foundation (Santander, Spain, 2017), Onassis AIR (Athens, Greece, 2019) and National Institute of Design (Gandhinagar, India, 2020). Paribartana Mohanty is a storyteller and an artist based in Delhi. He works in the medium of video, performance-lecture, painting, text-based work, writes for his blog and on social media platforms, and curates. He has exhibited in many group exhibitions, film, festivals, seminars and symposiums.

This is the second program of the ‘The Artists’ Way’ series of experimental workshops, organized virtually by KNMA. These workshops are led by practicing artists who have been using workshops as part of their art making process, often collaborating with different groups and forming their own personal, formal and informal networks of learning and unlearning. The series is imagined as an exploratory platform, with part pedagogic intent and infused with new questions, doubts, playfulness and sometimes also involving a collective/collaborative production towards the end of the workshop. The program is part of KNMA Education Outreach, with the focus on artistic research as new pedagogies of the future. Each workshop is unique, different in format, scope and methodology, wherein artists also share their related research. ‘The Artists’ Way’ program is outlined by Akansha Rastogi, with Madhurima Chaudhuri, Neha Tickoo, Rajshree Poonam Gupta and Priya Chandra.

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A statement repeated during this moment of pandemic and lockdown highlights this as a time to pause and seriously consider how we, collectively, proceed.

Manifestos have often served as a means by which individuals and groups state intentions. Could manifestos play a role in how we envision the future and move forward at this moment? We will discuss manifestos as a form, critically consider the problems and potentials of manifesto-making in our present moment. In this participatory workshop, we take as many steps as possible to construct our own manifestos.

This online workshop is free, participatory in nature and involves working in groups. It will happen over two days and interested participants are expected to commit their presence on both the days and undertake some group work between sessions. The age limit for this workshop is 18 years and above. The workshop will explore the possibility of further collaborative work towards the end.

Kush Badhwar is an interdisciplinary practitioner operating across media, art, cinematic and other social contexts. He is interested in ecology, including the life of sound and images across stretches of time and political change.

The Artists’ Way’ is a series of experimental workshops hosted virtually by KNMA and led by practicing artists who have been using workshops, different pedagogic and collaborative methods to develop projects and ideas. The series is imagined as an exploratory platform, with part pedagogic intent, raise new questions and doubts with playfulness and sometimes involving a collective/collaborative production towards the end of the workshop. This program is part of KNMA Education Outreach, with the focus on artistic research as new pedagogies of the future. Each workshop is unique, different in format, scope and methodology, wherein artists also share their related research with the participants.

‘The Artists’ Way’ program is outlined by Akansha Rastogi, with Madhurima Chaudhuri, Neha Tickoo, Rajshree Poonam Gupta and Priya Chandra.