Artist, lives and works in London, U.K.

Born in Calcutta and educated in Iran and England, Ansuman Biswas has an international artistic practice spanning from music, writing, performance, to installation and video. His theme and core focus is the comparative study of ancient Indian philosophy and present day science.

I am particularly interested in critiquing the notion of objectivity in science. The pursuit of objectivity has hi-jacked modern scientific methodology to the exclusion of lived experience and has led to a blinding fragmentation in modern culture. I believe that there exists a methodology which holds conscious experience, emotion and compassion within the realm of scientific enquiry without sacrificing precision or rigour. My work is a practical attempt to examine this state of affairs and to discern the shape of a possible future practice – one that pays as much attention to our fears and desires as to our ideas. This work seems to me to be imperative now since the engine of scientific curiosity, steered by the voracious logic of global capital, is catastrophically degrading the biosphere.

My work is informed by a comparative study of mainstream Western science, and some of those influences at its fringes such as Goethe, phenomenology and non-Western cosmologies. In particular my inspiration and technique is founded in the ancient Indian practice of vipassana – a fully realized scientific methodology.

Artist, lives and works in Bangalore, India

I’m Sureshkumar [in short: Suresh]. I was trained in sculpture. I am used to dealing with structures and installations with mixed media. Currently, most of my projects are into public art, kind of happenings. I do performances also, in the sense of a physical act. I work as a teacher at an art college and I do my art projects.

Artist, lives and works in Bangalore, India

I’m Surekha. My work was that of a painter. I started off with paper and created objects. Then I continued with photography and video. And now, most of my works are installations with objects, photography and video.

Artist/Teacher, lives and works in Bangalore, India

The last few years have been very intensive and interesting, as my work has been going through a much-awaited shift! I feel that I went through a full circle but of course when I have reached the other end of the circle I have gained a lot more. As many artists I started off as a painter, interested in the act of image making and discovering images rather that creating them with a preconception. My work dealt with issues related to industrial and communal violence. My participation in the group installation projects later, dealing with issues like territory, consumerism, communalism and identity enhanced my interest and gave me an opportunity to study these issues in depth. My involvement in workshops with people from different backgrounds and communities like ‘backward’ and ‘tribal’ communities from different parts of India and working on various art forms and performances have broadened my horizon in understanding ‘Indian-ness’. It has also exposed me to the issues of consumerism and the politics of culture and understanding the reality behind the so-called development of society in particular and nation on the whole. Born and brought up in a relatively conventional society and exposed to the strong regional culture that forms an important part of one’s psyche, I have attempted to distance myself and analyze it and understand it better through interactions with artists from India and abroad.
For the last few years I have been able to travel and participate in residency programs and that has helped me to explore my ideas further both in terms of contents and form. I have been working with installation and video as my main medium and tried to push the line as much as possible. The shift from painting to installation to video and later back to painting (!) has been gradual.
I have taken part in a few International artists workshops and I like to connect to the place where I am working responding to both environment and work accordingly… I would like to call such work place specific.

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