Brainstorming with the Artist Team

Last week we met up with our artist team to discuss the upcoming workshops we will conduct in Chitpur Road.  As usual, we met up in Studio 21 in Gariahat, South Kolkata, and the discussion was a fruitful one. 

The group of assembled artists included experts in the fields of printmaking, art history, architecture, curation, and performance.  Earlier discussions had revolved around social art practices in general, discussions of "community," and thinking about how to conceptualize the process of "community art." 

Having participants from very different disciplines means that talking about art inevitably brings up many different view points - even conflicting ones. The Hamdasti team has really enjoyed the opportunity to learn from these collaborations and conversations. We are looking forward to facilitate bringing together these different perspectives in a community setting. 

In this discussion, we attempted to narrow down the areas of focus for the different community workshops to be conducted on Chitpur Road at the end of January.  Some of these interests can be seen below, from critical lenses and practices, to signage and names, to documenting history and local narratives, to confronting public and private spaces. 

Based on the interests of each artist we formed three groups, each of which will develop a site-specific project with students and community members on Chitpur Road. Avijna, Manas and Rajdip will focus on Public Spaces, Joyraj, Sagnik and Ankita on Jatra, and Purnaa, Rajasee and Nilanjan on Printmaking. To kick off the projects we are starting with workshops at the Oriental Seminary School.


Stay tuned for more workshop updates!