The Gender. Kala. Aur Hum. Workshops will be organised by the reFrame Institute of Art and Expression, New Delhi, in collaboration with Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics, Himachal Pradesh.
Workshop Description
Are you keen to understand and think deeply about the relationship between art and gender? How do different art forms help us identify, articulate and express issues close to our hearts and convey the complex experiences of caste, religion, dis/ability, sexuality, conflict and more? How do we create works that speak of our individual and collective realities?
reFrame offers just the space in which to get familiar with understanding and interpreting art and artistic practices. This is a series of art appreciation workshops, with three specific artforms at their core, through which we will look at issues of gendered lives and living and how they can be expressed. Focusing on digital performances, writing and mixed media work, the workshops will deconstruct various artworks to think about their fundamental elements/ constituents/ qualities and how they frame diverse concerns and issues, while offering a broad framework to employ while engaging with art as both tool and outcome.
Segments
Gender and Digital Performance: When technology becomes part of the performance. Gender and Writing: When we imagine and write out our worlds.Gender and Mixed Media Art: When anything becomes a medium to create art.
Objectives
The central idea of the workshops is to explore and engage with the idea of using art for the articulation of political visions and lived realities, as well as a means of generating dialogue and fostering social change, with a focus on gender and its diverse and complex intersections.
The Workshop will help participants:
- Discover digital performance, writing and mixed media as ways of articulating, confronting or exposing issues that concern us, and our alternative imaginations of the world.
- Identify and reflect on diverse possibilities of creative expression and construction.
- Think about tools to understand and unpack artworks to engage with what they communicate, how and why, and the larger context in which they are created and exhibited.
- Experiment with expressing themselves in any/all of the art forms of the workshops.
Workshop Design
The workshops are planned as interactive sessions designed to speak through, learn from and help understand/appreciate works of art created by various artists of multiple locations and gender identities. Using diverse artworks across each art form as the primary pedagogical materials, the workshops will help participants unravel and understand questions around gender, the making of art and creative choices employed in expressing oneself.
Resource Team
The workshops will be conducted by members of reFrame, a Delhi based initiative that produces, mentors and disseminates artistic efforts that respond to contemporary social and political challenges.
- Vani Subramanian: Feminist activist, documentary filmmaker and mixed media artist.
- Tulika Srivastava: Documentary film commissioner, mentor and programmer.
- Ridhima Mehra: Feminist documentary film commissioner, mentor and programmer.
- Neeharika Sreedhar: Researcher and designer.
- Shals Mahajan: A writer, activist, layabout, part feline, somewhat hooman genderqueer fellow who lives in Bombay, but mainly in their head. They have worked on issues of gender, sexuality, caste and communalism as a trainer, teacher and activist, and enjoy conducting workshops on writing with university students, folks working on social justice issues, women returning to literacy, and queer persons. They are the author of several children’s books including Reva and Prisha, Timmi in Tangles, Timmi and Rizu, A Big Day for the Little Wheels, among others; and have co-authored No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy.
Profile of Participants
The Gender. Kala. Aur Hum. workshops are open to all who are interested in creating and using art for social change. Participants could include those involved in social movements, political/cultural organisations and societies, students and trainers. Those with a basic understanding of, or at least a definitive interest in understanding gender and its intersectionalities, will be given preference.
Medium of Instruction
English and Hindi
Cost of the Workshop (including stay and accommodation)
Individual: 6000/-, Institutional: 8000/-
Participant Contribution
We hope that participants will contribute the amount towards workshop expenses, including all on-site workshop costs: boarding, lodging, and all the materials used. Travel of participants will have to be borne by the organisation/the participants.
Do not let money impede your application. Need-based partial fee waivers are available. We have limited scholarships, so please apply for a waiver if you need it. Do remember that there may be others who need it more than you. The partial fee waivers will be offered to people from marginalised groups and non-funded social, political or student movements.
Venue
Sambhaavnaa Institute, VPO –Kandbari, Tehsil–Palampur, District –Kangra, PIN 176061, Himachal Pradesh
How to Reach?
Interested candidates can directly register through this link.
Contact
- WhatsApp or call: 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm)
- E-mail: programs@sambhaavnaa.org
