New Delhi: Khoj presents SEZ Who? – an exhibition consisting of site-specific installations that question the rationale behind the making of SEZs ( Special Economic Zones) from March 6, 2010 to March 14, 2010 at Khoj Studios S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi. The exhibition would be followed by a seminar on March 11, 2010 at Khoj on issues around the city and land usage.
Khoj International Artists Association is an artist led, alternative space for experimentation and international exchange based in India. KHOJ seeks to promote cross cultural exchange within the visual practices of the 'Global South'. Since its inception in 1997 artists from Iran, Egypt, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Lebanon, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan and several countries in Africa, have participated in the Khoj workshops and residencies.
Project SEZ Who? was initiated by Tushar Joag and Sharmila Samant who invited fellow artists Justin Ponmany, Prajakta Potnis, and Uday Shanbhag to take on the role of a fact finding committee. The installations are an output of their in depth research as they visited areas affected by Special Economic Zones around Bombay in six months starting Jan 2009 (namely the villages in the Raigad district (MSEZ) and the Uttan-Gorai belt also called Dharavi island).
Presenting a dynamic relationship with space, the installations at the gallery change every day. For instance, the first day would witness sea salt being spread over the entire floor of the gallery. While on the second day, the artists would make salt from water of Uttan Gorai region and Raigad district finally creating salt piles and grain sacks. Drawings and documentaries also form an important part of the installations. Thus, the space gets altered significantly leading to a day by day unfolding of the project.
Khoj initiated the first programmes focusing on Public Art with artists’ residencies in 2005 and 2006 with Indian and international artists. These were preceded by an eco- art residency in 2004 as well as many smaller projects in the public realm around ecology and environment over the past 5 years. Khoj has also focused on community art over the last five years. More than nine projects have aimed at involving the Khirkee community that surrounds the KHOJ studio in New Delhi. Projects have ranged from artist- commissioned temple installations, to local shop make-overs, to clay toy-making with neighborhood children, all completed with community input at every stage. These projects not only ground KHOJ in its locality but ameliorate the somewhat alienating effect of an otherwise potentially elitist-seeming venture.
In 2009, Khoj supported 1mile², a global arts programme that asks communities to map the biodiversity, cultural diversity, and aesthetic diversity of their local neighbourhood, working in collaboration with an artist and an ecologist. Local and international artists worked with various communities and projects ranged from aural archives of local remedies and medicinal plants, to public interventions around the issue of identity and representation.
More recently in 2008 the 48˚C Public.Art.Ecology festival held in Delhi (curated by Pooja Sood) around 8 public sites with 25 artists from India and abroad interrogated the teetering ecology of the city through the prism of contemporary art. Through a number of art interventions in various public spaces around Delhi, the festival attempted to draw a diverse public into the world of this critical imaginary.
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