Different strokes embellish this canvas

They are young and ready to take risks in art, they believe in free experimentation and Khoj International Artists’ Association gives these young and talented artists an opportunity to think beyond the stereotype.

Running the 11th edition of ‘Peers 2014’, this year too Khoj brought together artworks of graduates and post graduates from across the country on a common platform.
Artworks which included videos, photographs, sculptural installations and sound-based work by Amshu MS, Diptej Vernekar, Dheer Kaku, Ragini Bhow, Sanket Jadia and Sangita Maity were displayed at Khoj Studios, Khirkee Extension as a part of the annual education and outreach residency programme of four weeks.

Hyderabad-based Amshu MS mainly worked with videos along with paintings, installations and photography incorporating narrative structures of filmmaking. “In the course of a daily mundane life of the city, certain people, spaces and acts come across as strange interventions,” says Amshu.

“These acts exist in a minimal space, oscillating between reality and fiction. My intention is to isolate these acts, to look at them and to observe the transformations that take place while creating these little fictions,” he says. Amshu’s works included the footage shot around Khirkee extension with sculptural video and installations.

Diptej Vernekar, whose work was mostly in the form of paintings, videos and installations, says, “Coming from a different place, to this place of migrants (Khirkee village), there is always a sense of uncertainty – chaos of survival, sense of disorientation, a sense of voyeurism in a space as well, as you are being viewed in the maze-like passages of buildings.”

Patterns, repetitions, loops, lines, circles, time, symmetry, shapes and ideas were explored in Dheer Kaku’s work. He says, “My works are chronicles of these patterns and conversations between my body and the chosen medium of expression. Actions, drawings, words, pictures, videos and sounds are my chosen instruments to display and reveal my perspectives,” says Mumbai-based Kaku.

Meanwhile, Ragini Bhow’s artwork explored her experiences and observations of light and space. Sanket Jadia, who is currently doing Masters in Visual Arts from Ambedkar University Delhi, has an inclination towards objects that are strangely still and motionless. 

Sangita Maity who is pursuing Masters in Fine Arts in Print Making from Faculty of Visual Arts, Rabindra Bharati University, Delhi, says, “I am researching on labour of different professionals who’ve migrated from different parts of the country.

 Interacting with them at their work place or some time at a tea adda to know their personal history, the process of coming to their respective profession, how they migrated and so on. My work takes the form of audio recordings and video work.”