Hemant Sreekumar: India
Name of your organisation: Khoj International Artist’s Association
Website of your organisation: http://khojworkshop.org
How is your organisation funded?
Khoj receives core funding from Hivos for all it’s programmes. Ford Foundation funds the Digital Network and Artists Mobility where we are able to support South Asian Artists. Various other International or sate cultural departments do project based funding of various International Artists.
Explain what your organisation is about (to somebody who does not know about it)
Khoj International Artist’s Association is a Indian non profit artist led forum based in New Delhi initiated in 1997 with annual workshops as part of the Triangle Arts network (UK). Khoj has ever since been the front runner in the Indian Arts promoting young , experimental art practitioners in the fields of interactive + electronic/digital Arts + “New Media” + Public art through innovative curatorial projects that seek to examine the essence of the contemporaenity and relevance of contemporary real Indian Aesthetic practices in Urban contexts through it’s residency and workshop programme models.
Describe how your organisation is engaged in international cooperation and exchange.
Khoj’s residency and workshop models have always followed a “learning through exchange” model where creative practitioners are involved in peer to peer interaction. Involving South Asian and West Asian artists has brought in the core value of our curations where we have been able to break through decades of institutional neglect that the Indian State’s Art policy has committed on Indian contemporary art . All our programmes are of an international nature where Indian artists share the creative space with exciting cutting edge art practitioners from Europe , Africa , Americas and the Global South.
Describe how your art space relates to the local community. If you are about to open an art space, explain how you related to the local community in your previous experiences.
Community Arts has been a core activity for Khoj Studios , located as it is in a rapidly changing urban village of Khirkee in New Delhi. Mostly done involving volunteers and part time artist enthusiasts we have been fairly successful in opening out as an art space in an urban zone with lots of migrant day workers.
Projects done have been mostly through public murals , air brushed biscuit delivery vehicles, shop makeovers , temple installations etc… all done with the conceptual or actual production involvement of local community enthusiasts.
What are the major internal and external challenges your organisation is facing?
Khoj International Artist Assosiation has changed over the course of the last 10 from a annual art workshop organizing group to a curatorial venture that seeks to seed experimental new media practices with a clear focus on a learning by exchange model involving artists from the global south. Major internal challenges presently is the correct staffing of the studio with a team that is professional and trained in arts management. Presently apart from the director and the accounts + admin officer the rest of the crew is basically artists who have trained under the director slowly and gained confidence through experience. But increasingly we feel the need to have more directly trained arts management staff to better coordinate the activities and institutional networking.
Externally the biggest challenge which is effectively dealt with is expanding the Khoj model in other smaller towns of India where a genuine need for a similar forum / space exists.
What are the main achievements and strengths of your organisation?
Khoj ‘s main achievement has been locating radical and experimental arts practices with a strong community focus as a feasible and important part of the development in the contemporary Indian art scenario of the last decade. For a lot of young and mid career artists Khoj has offered the correct environment at the crucial time where they have been able to execute ambitious projects on very moderate budgets. Increasingly Khoj has been able to provide the free and open discursive space where artists have been able to criticize , critically appreciate and learn from a Process based model where the process and the research involved in evry project is given equal attention if not more than the end result itself. Further new and innovative outreach methods have gone a long way in bringing in a more interdisciplinary audience that feedbacks the energy of the programme.
