The Art For Art Foundation (A4A) invites emerging artists from India to apply for our upcoming virtual residency program, Intersecting Realms: Explorations of Environment and Gender. This virtual residency aims to foster a dynamic exploration of the critical themes of environment and gender, examining how they intersect to shape individual and collective experiences.
Artists
Arindam Manna · Mohd. Intiyaz · Shilpeksh G Khalorkar · Vanshika Babbar
Mentors
Vasudha Thozhur · Gigi Scaria · Shantamani Muddaiah · Mithu Sen
2024
Explorations of Environment and Gender
Arindam Manna
Transience and Materiality is an ongoing research-driven project that explores the relationship between mobility, space, and memory within rapidly transforming landscapes. Initiated along the Grand Trunk Road in Dadri, the project maps the subtle imprints of time and movement through stories of migration and shifting geogra- phies. Currently focusing on Ghitorni, a village in South West Delhi with layered historical roots and urban complexities, Arindam examines how the built environment is shaped by ecological and cultural negotiations. His phenomenological approach foregrounds lived experience over static representation. By engaging deeply with three key locations—Sabzi Mandi Gali, 100 Ft Road, and Forest Lane—he captures sensory and temporal rhythms using a range of media including sketches, drawings, paintings, photography, and video essays. The project unfolds as a reflection on the intertwine drealities of history, urbantransition, and human presence. Arindam Manna (b. 1994, Suri, West Bengal) is a visual artist whose practice investigates mobility, temporality, and the shifting landscapes of everyday life. He holds a BFA in Painting from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan (2014–2018), and an MFA from Shiv Nadar University (2020). Currently based in Delhi, Arindam’s work emerges from long-term research rooted in place, memory, and human experience. His project “Transience and Materiality,” initiated in 2018, draws from encounters along the Grand Trunk Road—from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to his hometown of Suri in Bengal—unfolding a narrative of lives in flux. Engaging with drawing, video, photography, and installation, his process is immersive and deeply situated, often blurring the line between personal and collective memory. Through performativity, mark-making, and observation, Arindam investigates how time and movement shape spatial realities across rural and urban India.
Before creating the layout, I took the time to meet with several children to discuss their lives and experiences. I wanted to learn about their daily routines and how their families manage their finances to support their education. Understanding these aspects is essential for capturing the essence of their journeys. The layout will reflect the children's unique stories and experiences, showcasing the challenges and triumphs they face. Additionally, I plan to incorporate some of my own childhood memories to provide a personal touch and connect our experiences. To complement this narrative, I am including a selection of photographs and rough sketches that illustrate both the children's lives and my reflections.This combination aims to create a rich and engaging representation of our shared childhood experiences. Mohd. Intiyaz is a visual practitioner based in Delhi. His body of work is concerned with the ideas of memory, social disparities and politics of control and violence. Being a witness to experiences of displacement at a very young age, along with his family, he had to migrate from Sahibganj (a remote village in Jharkhand, India). Subjected to the harsh living conditions of Delhi slums, he had to constantly negotiate with social disparities and challenges that life had to pose on a day-to-day basis. His work borrows from such lived experiences, challenges and everyday negotiations. His work critically engages with the public and explores varied meanings and events of public gatherings. It is filled with figurative forms, layers, patterns, and camouflage of elements that seek inclination/inspiration from the city’s flora, fauna, architecture and surroundings. He engages with different mediums in his practice, ranging from murals and drawings to installations. He experiments with/ utilizes found objects, upcycled textiles, and sack bags to depict his concerns. His engagement highlights the ignorant attitude of the dominant and simultaneously speculates alternative futures where plurality is embraced.
Mohd. Intiyaz
This project explores ecological displacement and survival through the perspective of a small creature navigating a rapidly urbanizing environment. It contrasts the loss of natural habitats with the dangerous realities of modern human infrastructure. Core Themes & Narrative Elements Urbanization and Loss of Habitat: The transformation of green spaces—such as the renovation of a vibrant garden into concrete and cement—illustrates how rapid development eliminates natural shelters and forces native wildlife into vulnerable positions. Peril and Infrastructure: The roaring traffic and busy road act as formidable barriers, highlighting the constant threat and anxiety faced by urban wildlife attempting to traverse fragmented landscapes. Refuge in Reclaimed Spaces: An abandoned, overgrown house represents nature’s quiet resurgence. Untamed and forgotten by humans, it serves as a crucial sanctuary and food source amidst an increasingly hostile environment. Conceptual Intent By documenting the tension between concrete expansion and untamed refuge, the work invites viewers to reflect on human footprint, habitat loss, and the precarious existence of living creatures amidst urban growth. Shilpeksh G Khalorkar is a visual artist from Amravati, Maharashtra. He holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Visual Arts from the Department of Sculpture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda. Shilpeksh’s practice is deeply introspective, shaped by personal experiences and psychological states. Drawing from traumatic memories and familial discord, his work navigates themes of anxiety, fear, and existential crisis. Through an evocative use of material and metaphor—particularly the termite’s biting process—he translates internal turmoil into physical form. His art, spanning sculpture and mixed media, often utilizes surfaces like cardboard, wood, and paper to embody the erosion of memory and psyche. By confronting haunting thoughts and emotional turbulence, his practice becomes a space for catharsis, reflection, and transformation.
Shilpeksh G Khalorkar
Since I’ve been painting portraits with different secretions coming out of the faces-blood, tears, sweat, etc; I wanted to paint a series of portraits in which there is no such possibility for anything to come out- the face instead as an empty deflated object with only dents in place of eyes, mouth, nose. I’m not sure why I want to remove facial features from actual faces but turn objects like cars, airplanes, buses into faces; i think it has something to do with my confusions around the question of subjecthood today- there is an emptiness in the Self as well as the Other but the objects that surround us seem to be living lives of their own. I would want to experiment with other material for creating such objects but wish to improve my painting first. Alternative materials could be rubber, stretched-out plastic, etc. Vanshika Babbar is a multidisciplinary artist working across video and AR installations, painting, zines, and found media. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art (B.V.A) with a specialization in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, and a Master’s degree in Visual Art from the School of Cultural and Creative Expressions, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, New Delhi. Vanshika’s practice is rooted in interrogating middle-class identity, social absurdities under capitalism, and the ideological forces that shape everyday life. Her work navigates the political dimensions of subjectivity—exploring the interface between the personal and social, the referential and experiential. Her paintings often focus on close-ups of faces, transforming them into caricatures that expose hidden tensions and disavowed truths, giving a visual form to structures of power and governmentality. Drawing from found footage, popular imagery, and domestic objects, she assembles her materials into ironic, unresolved contradictions. Humour and contradiction become critical tools—reflecting on the struggle for agency and power, while avoiding reductive binaries of hope and despair.
Vanshika Babbar
