Faisal Anwar

Video: A monolog of 8 Pakistanis now living in Toronto, Canada, talking about their neighbourhoods in Pakistan. This video examines the nostalgia of immigrants when they talk about their home country. It also explores a common man's simple and loving relationship with the people, neighbourhood and cities they grew up in. While recounting memories we also notice the reluctance and dismay to talk about the present social and political turmoil that their cities are going through. 

Biography: Faisal Anwar is a digital media artist Pakistan/Toronto. He has a diverse background in theatre, film, media, interactive art and graphic design. Anwar’s art practice explores fictional, sociopolitical and edutainment narratives. He is interested in creating participatory experiences that connect and challenge the conventions of surveillance and interaction in modern urban cities. His projects often bring together art and technology in odd configurations to explore human perceptions towards architectural spaces and social interactivity. He is also the creator of 360EXtEndEd, a multiplatform project which explores a city's economic and social evolution. 360EXtEndEd examines how, in this hybrid age of globalization, we perceive our relationship with the city we call 'home'. 360EXtEndEd was launched in partnership for Toronto’s 175 Anniversary in 2009. Anwar’s other collaborative projects include: Zero Cluster, Into it, Gotcha and Feast in Exile.  Anwar is a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre's Habitat-LAB, Interactive Arts and Entertainment Program (2004) and has a Bachelor in graphic design from the National College of Arts Pakistan (1996). Anwar has also been an active member of the South Asian Visual Arts Centre’s Programming Committee (2006 – 07) and currently teaches interactive design at Centennial College and is the producer of an art and design studio called DGDIP.

Parvathy Baul

Biography: Parvathy Baul is a singer, painter and storyteller from West Bengal. After receiving her initial music and dance training during her childhood, she studied visual arts at the Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati at Shantiniketan. 
Her meeting with the living tradition of Baul prompted her to choose the path of self-training in the Baul order rather than an institutional degree. Since 1995 she has performed in her home state Bengal and all over India. She was also invited to participate in several international festivals including Festival de l'imaginaire (Paris), Festival international du Conte et du Monodrame (Beirut, Libanon), and Ethnomad (Geneva, Switzerland).Her guest appearances include prestigeous venues like the Noh theatre at Kyoto (Japan) together with Kamigata-mai and Kyogen Performers, the World Music Center New York, Chicago University, and Bread and Puppet Theatre (Vermont).

She has contributed Baul songs, woodcut prints, and a documentary video to the new South Asian department, Trope museum Amsterdam, (The Netherlands), since 2008 

Work: Parvathy Baul’s work probes the anxieties of the bauls, between life and death - who she considers a marginalized clan, being one herself. The philosophy of life although much spiritual for a baul; far away from the mundane life of every other human being. Parvathy employs the simple and traditional technique of woodcut prints to render the vacillation of life between the worlds – mortal and immortal.

Pushpamala N 
 
Works: These three works are from the project 'Paris Autumn' which are shot in Paris in the fall of 2005 with the French photographer Cedric Sartore. The project resulted in a 35 minute B&W film made from still photographs and a photographic installation based on images  from the film, creating a rich cinema theatre experience. As the artist- protagonist the artist turns ethnographer to study the history of past and present day France, by using references from French art, film, literature and poetry. The famous painting of Caravaggio's Fortune Teller which has been recreated, is the picture of an Egyptian woman reading the future of a French nobleman, establishing the theme of race and sect which runs throughout the film. The Graphic Posters on the other hand, take from the popular tradition of French comic books to talk about different layers of the city. This story begins with a sighting of the ghost of Gabrielle in the mansion where Pushpamala N. lived during her residency.  A glimpse into this secret past compels the artist to begin a quest, first to the Louvre where she discovers Caravaggio's The Fortune Teller.  Pushpamala N. continues the investigation throughout Paris as a driven detective, creating what Bernard Zürcher, one of the film's characters, has described as "a strange map: with Haussmannian perspectives, where the Eiffel Tower and cafés follow images of urban violence."  The artist's sometimes ironic and always entertaining journey through Paris unveils a charming and inventive mystery. 

Biogarphy: Rajkamal Kahlon (b 1974, auburn, CA) was raised in Northern California. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from the University of California, Davis in 1996, and an M.F.A. in Painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1999. She received a Summer Fellowship from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1998), was a Fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program , Whitney Museum of American Art (2001). She was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts (2004). She has participated in several group shows in New York and other countries in the West. Her opus has made strong cultural statement and has drawn attention intensely for addressing a wide range of issues such as body politics and racism , thereby opening up significant discourse of contemporary interest. 
 
Work: Did You Kiss the Deadbody is a reference to the last lines of Harold Pinter’s poem ‘Death’, which also forms the title of Kahlon’s current project.The series of drawings in ink and watercolour based on the autopsy reports of Iraq and Afghanistan derive from the same project.  Charged as they are, these drawings permeate into history, the past, obliteration and subjugation of racial identity and collective memory.

Sabrina

You Do Not Know What You Are Missing-Video
 
Biography: Sabrina (b 1971, Aligarh, India) passed her MFA from the College of Art, New Delhi in 1996 and an MFA in Art Practice from the Goldsmiths College, London University, London in 2009. She acquired a Mexican Government Scholarship in 1999-2000, and a Junior Fellowship Ministry of Culture in 2006-8. She has participated in 8 solo shows and several group exhibitions in India and abroad. She has travelled extensively the world around, including several important archaeological sites in Mexico; organized and curated shows She works mainly with collage, assemblage, installation and video. 

The artist lives and works in New Delhi, India. 

Work: Dislocation/relocation is the primary concern of Sabrina Osborn’s work. She tries to create a non-narrative, disorientating experience for the viewer by positioning him/her between two quite sizeable video projections .The videos are beguiling amalgamations of fragmented constructions of juxtaposed images, sounds, spaces and times; - a montage through which she tries to make her viewer struggle to locate, make connections, assimilate meanings and get immersed in the process of identifying the familiar /unfamiliar/known/unknown, building the feeling of estrangement. It deals with complex relations of identity, memory, loss, nostalgia, fear and melancholia. 

Saiket Surai

Work: Memoirs of a Floating World is an account of the locals of the Aila affected Sundarban area in West Bengal.  It is a tale of a land that has submerged under the Bay Of Bengal, more so as a result of indiscriminate felling of the mangrove forests. Consequently there is hardly any strip of land left for the people to dwell. The storm has further devastated the land leaving the people to struggle every moment to build barricades with wooden poles and bamboos to stop the landslide. Unfortunately there struggle for every twenty-four hours of building up hope goes in vain in one swash. The video is a documentation of the manmade problems aggravated by local petty politics through a feud between the contractors and labours. It also documents the frustration, impatience and haplessness of a marginalized section of people against the faulty government policies. 

Profile: Saikat Surai was born in 1977 in North Kolkata. He is a Painter, Print-maker, New Media practitioner. He has several short films and ad films at his disposal. He passed his Graduation standing First Class First and a Post-Graduation with a First Class in Print Making from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata in the years 2004 and 2006 respectively. He has participated in numerous group shows including Ideas, Images and Experiences in 2008, curated by Anirudh Chari at the Mon Art Gallerie , Kolkata; Khoj Kolkata Artists’ Residency/ Office ,2008; Mirror Image, in 2009 and Narratives Now, in 2010, bothat the Gandhara Art Gallery, Kolkata; Art Against Terrorism, in 2009, with Khoj Kolkata at the Aakriti Art Gallery, which was a joint venture of nine other galleries in the city.

He has participated in numerous workshops and is currently engaged in two community projects – Designs on a Delta and Asoknagar: A search .He is also a member of Khoj Kolkata since its inception in 2005. His work has been in the private collection of the Park Hotel, Kolkata.
He lives and works in Kolkata. 

Smruthi Gargi Eswar
Photographer 

Smruthi Gargi Eswar studied in MSU Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda and CKP Bangalore. She went on to pursuing a career in Graphic Design in India, Africa and the Philippines. She is now working on Graphic Art and Photography projects in numerous places around the world along with her design career.  She has taken part in group shows in Delhi, Budapest and New York.
Smruthi is the Vice President on the Board of Director of AISS (Art in Social Structures) established in Ghana. Her photo essays have been published in Tehelka (India) and in Rogue (Philippines).

Her photographic style is a blend of the Journalistic and Artistic. Essay that goes beyond merely stating what is. Despite photographing in the digital age, her pictures bring with them a strong nostalgia of film. Her subjects though varied show a clear fascination with people, places and their correlation. Through her pictures she carries her world and shows them in the way she experiences it.

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