Features | Colour Quotient by Asian Paints

Since the beginning of this year, I have been a regular contributor for Asian Paints' digital publication - Colour Quotient. Here is some of the stuff I have done so far:

Tiling Bombay by Kahani Designworks
CQ Interviews: Design Museum’s curator Alex Newson on Breathing Colour by Hella Jongerius
Rubberband collaborated with Memphis’ founder-member & painter Nathalie Du Pasquier
CQ Interviews: London-based artist Tyga Helme finds colour inspiration in India.
Elements: Photographer Ricky Gui documents Singapore’s ‘Hidden Doors’
Amygdala recreates Indonesian bamboo craft for contemporary market
SPIN combines Wood, Metal and Nordic Design to create furniture
Design Meets Art at Architect Rooshad Shroff’s Solo Show 15,556
Design Indaba’s Emerging Creatives: Mpho Vackier
Outings Project comes to India
Design Indaba’s Emerging Creatives: Ashlee Ainsley Lloyd
Meet OneOrTheOther, a Bangalore-based design startup that creates beautiful minimal posters
Sensory Experiences: ‘Boutique’ by Niklas Roy; an experimental colour-to-smell translator
Intertwine: I was a Sari turns old saris into contemporary lifestyle products
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Personal Project | The Floating Magazine 2.0

The Floating Magazine (TFM) is a digital publication about visual culture in Asia & Middle East. This is a project I have been running for about a year, and have recently re-launched with a new design and new features. Check it out:  thefloatingmagazine.com

Feature | The Zine Culture | PrintWeek India magazine

The more gargantuan the mainstream becomes, the more there is the need for alternative or counterculture voices to emerge. And one of the key platforms that have hosted many of these voices is independent zines. The first ever association with the term ‘zine’ began with various fanzines for science fiction in the 1920s.Eventually, zines helped fuel the punk music subculture including the Riot Grrrl movement (an underground feminist movement associated with the punk rock and alternative music scenes) of the 90s, among others. 

As zinewiki.com (yes, there is a whole Wikipedia devoted to zines) explains, zines have been around forever; they have only shape-shifted a bit over the years.Instead of being photocopied versions of cutting and pasting of content and images by hand, a lot of zines are now digitally, and sometimes quite finely, produced. Their essence however remains the same in most cases. They are still sold or distributed in small quantities and in selective places. Most importantly, they still champion the DIY, counterculture and personal opinion spirit. During the last few years, print zine as a medium has been explored by a few Indian visual artists with some terrific results. 

We speak to two Indian visual artists who have done interesting work in this space and are championing the zine movement in the country. Read more: http://www.printweek.in/features/zine-culture-23352

Personal Project | The Floating Magazine

The Floating Magazine is (so far) an online personal project that I started in December 2015. It is dedicated to having meaningful conversations with visual arts from Asia and Middle East. Here are the artists who I have interviewed on the platform so far:

Chirag Wakaskar, founder, Everyday Mumbai (India)

Dhruvi Acharya, contemporary artist (India)  

Hadi Uddin, photographer (Bangladesh)

Xuan Loc Xuan, illustrator (Vietnam)

Eiman Elgibreen, artist (Saudi Arabia)

Shiho Kito, photographer (Japan)

Tejal Patni, photographer (Dubai)

Can Cetinkaya, illustrator & artist (Turkey)

Yael Bronner Rubin, artist (Israel/Hong Kong)

Esther Goh, illustrator (Singapore)

Jia Sung, artist (Singapore/USA)

Sveta Dorosheva, artist (Israel)

Nouf Alhimiary, photographer (Saudi Arabia)

Yashaswi Mathis, artist (India)

Takashi Yamamoto, printmaker & artist (Japan)

Sai Selvarajan, filmmaker (India/Sri Lanka/USA)

Neuneu Woo, illustrator (China/Singapore)

Kouzou Sakai, illustrator (Japan)

Adil Hasan, photographer (India)

Kurchi Dasgupta, artist (Nepal/India)

Chia Chi Yu, illustrator (Taiwan)

Kursat Bayhan, photographer (Turkey)

John Ed De Vera, graphic designer (Philippines)

Kishor Sharma, photographer (Nepal)

Selman Hosgor, illustrator (Turkey)

Kathrin Honesta, illustrator & graphic designer (Malaysia)

Heraa Khan, artist (Pakistan)

Meera Sethi, artist (India/ Canada)

Feature | Kathputli Colony | Man's World Magazine

It’s difficult not to be dazzled by the different art forms that can be found in every scrawny street of Kathputli Colony, the slum in West Delhi that is home to several generations of traditional folk artists. The families, which consist of acrobats, puppeteers, folk musicians, dancers, snake charmers, sculptors, magicians, painters and bioscope makers, among others, settled here from different parts of the country almost four decades ago. Once peeled off, however, the colony’s endlessly fascinating veneer reveals a plethora of issues, and an endless wait for its residents. In 2014, the tensions between the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the residents of the colony were at an all time high. The DDA, which has partnered with the real estate company Raheja Developers, was trying to get the residents to move to transit camps at Anand Parbat, as part of its ‘in-situ slum rehabilitation scheme’. The promise made to the residents was that once the colony was vacated, the construction of multi-storied buildings would begin, with modern flats set aside for them.

About 525 families out of an estimated 3,000 moved to the transit camps, but the rest decided to stay put. For almost a year now, there has barely been any dialogue between the DDA and the residents of the colony. The sounds of the media attention, the NGO interventions and the daily demonstrations are playing at very low decibels now, and although normal life goes on, there is a sense of uneasy calm here. I walk through the morning bustle and a crazy amount of filth to Phad artist Shankar Lal Bhopa’s grocery shop, located next to his house. Talking about the current state of things, he says, “We haven’t been told anything about what’s happening. Our internal meetings about the issue have stopped too. But we still don’t feel safe, as all this can change any moment, and the biggest fear is that they will evict us.”

READ MORE: http://www.mansworldindia.com/news/kathputli-colony-traditional-folk-artists/


Read my other pieces on Kathputli Colony here, here and here. 

Profile | Sameer Kulavoor | Paper Planes

The works of 31 year old Sameer Kulavoor, visual artist and founder of design studio Bombay Duck Designs, often fiercely cut through the bones of urban India to capture its soul. The quintessential self-initiated publication projects like The Ghoda Cycle Project, Oh Flip, Zeroxwalah Zine and Blued Book are keenly observed minutiae about the makeshift and inventive side of urban India, peppered with personal notes and bursting with raw energy.

Read more: http://www.joinpaperplanes.com/blog-detail/magazine-folk-sameer-kulavoor/

Profile | Gigi Scaria | Open Magazine

Our ideas about what’s home and what’s displacement are constantly evolving. They often confront us in different forms. In one form, there is the exodus of Syrian refugees, who have had to flee their home to escape the atrocities of a civil war. In another form of migration, many working class people shift from rural to urban areas in the hope of better lives. Within a city, migration happens to adjust with the rapid shape- shifting and urbanisation of the city. In his oeuvre so far, Delhi-based multi-disciplinary contemporary Indian artist Gigi Scaria has often explored the idea of migration and many of its facets. His current show ‘The Ark’, a mix of paintings and videos, at gallery Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai, carries forward the theme seamlessly. ‘The Ark’ emerges from the poetic and mythical past—Noah’s Ark—but addresses the horrific migration and environmental situation of the present and leans towards a hopeful future.

Read More: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/gigi-scaria-lost-in-the-city

Profile | Shumon Ahmed | Open Magazine

The monstrous presence of the decaying, dying ships on the shores of Chittagong in Bangladesh appear in sharp contrast to the people working there who seem like Lilliputians in front of the vessels. Still, somehow, both beautifully and poignantly merge in some of the photographic artworks exhibited as part of Bangladeshi multidisciplinary visual artist Shumon Ahmed’s solo show, ‘When Dead Ships Travel’.

For the past few years, Ahmed’s name has been mentioned enthusiastically in almost all conversations about the contemporary art scene in Bangladesh. The artist was in Mumbai for the opening of the show at Project 88, a 4,000 sq ft gallery in a space that used to be a century-old metal printing press in Colaba. Our conversation starts with the current show, but slowly meanders through other fascinating aspects of Ahmed’s work and life.

Read more: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/shumon-ahmed-shipwreck-shock

Profile | Reena Saini Kallat | Open Magazine

Deo-Yan is a hybrid between the Deodar and the Banyan tree, national trees of Pakistan and India respectively. They both lovingly emerge from the same roots, but on two opposite sides. Zoom out your perspective a bit, and you will see that the hybrid tree is sheathed beneath a pair of human lungs, and small pieces of electric fence are scattered all over the image. Deo-Yan is one of the many imagined species that are part of the multimedia contemporary artist Reena Saini Kallat’s new solo show ‘Hyphenated Lives’ at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai.

“‘Hyphenated Lives’ looks at our shared existence. Nature tells you, like nothing else can, how certain species are interdependent on each other. Nature is also in defiance of the divisions that we have created. This particular body of work has come from our long shared historical past that is so deep-rooted,” says Kallat as we sit down for a long chat over evening tea at her studio at Chimbai Road in Bandra West.

READ MORE: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/reena-saini-kallat-art-culture/layer-upon-layer

Profile | Raghava KK | Open Magazine

Bedecked with large colourful paintings, the walls of the main gallery at the landmark Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai are bursting with energy. It’s an August morning. Preparations are in full swing for the opening of Raghava KK’s new solo exhibition ‘Ridiculous Copycats’, which will later travel to the Art Musings gallery. Less than five minutes late for our meeting, Raghava walks in full of the exuberance that mirrors his artworks, and apologises profusely for being delayed. We meet Raghava in front of his colossal artwork Guernica 2.0, placed at the wall right opposite the entrance, a rendition of Picasso’s renowned anti-war work Guernica which was created in 1937. He was completely stunned when he saw Guernica for the first time, he says, and began to see so much more in it that he decided to “evolve” it. “The best art makes the viewer contribute his or her perspective to it. And I wanted to add my perspective to Picasso’s Guernica,” says the artist.....

Read On: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/raghava-kk-the-protean-artist

Features | Street Beat | The Daily Pao

I do this monthly series for The Daily Pao. It is also part of my personal project theothercreatives.com

"This new series of posts by freelance writer Payal Khandelwal documents some of the city’s artists, craftsmen and designers who lie outside the mainstream. Their work can be seen on our pavements, in makeshift shops and various nooks and crannies and forms a vibrant part of our cityscape."

Read the stories below: 

STREET BEAT: PAVEMENT GALLERY ARTIST GANRAJ DASHRATH CHAUDHARY

STREET BEAT: BAMBOO CRAFTSMAN JAGDISH PARMAR

STREET BEAT: FURNITURE MAKER MOHAMMAD IRRFAN

STREET BEAT: BUS AND TAXI STICKER ARTIST FARHAN IBRAHIM SHEIKH

Profile | Tasneem Zakaria Mehta: The Revivalist | Open Magazine

How Tasneem Zakaria Mehta transformed Mumbai’s Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum into one of the country’s most buzzy and contemporary spaces for Indian art.

A piece I wrote for Open Magazine. You can read it here: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/tasneem-zakaria-mehta-the-revivalist

This was also re-published on the Huffington Post India: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/open-magazine/tasneem-zakaria-mehta-the_b_7767310.html

Interview | Chip Kidd | Kyoorius

"Our second conversation in the series of interviews done during AGI Open conference, held in London on 26th and 27th September, is with the extremely talented Chip Kidd. Writer, art director, book designer, editor and Batman fanatic, Kidd gave us one of the wittiest and most entertaining sessions at the conference. He specializes in book cover designs and has been working for Alfred A. Knopf since 1986. He is also the author of well-known books including The Cheese Monkeys, The Learners, graphic novel Batman: Death by Design and the most recently released and much talked about Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, a book targeted at children."

Click here to read more. 

Feature | A Designer's City: Conversations on Creative Bombay | Unmapped Magazine

Between the chaos of life and the tranquillity of the sea, Bombay has many facets indeed. The famous or infamous indomitable spirit of the city, the humans behind what is now an international case study - the dabbawallas, the impeccable yet rickety Mumbai local trains, the largest slums in Asia, Dharavi, the largest red light district in Asia, Kamathipura, the historical architecture of the town, the charmed life and bohemia of Bandra, the vast spaces of crowding suburbs, the snarling traffic, the ubiquitous black and yellows, the filth, the vibrant nightlife, the burgeoning street art, the heady concoction of different types of people, and so much more. Bombay is indeed one of the world’s truly unique cities, both for its offerings and its quirks.
READ MORE: http://www.unmappedmag.com/issue-31/designers-city-conversations-on-creative-bombay/

Interview | Meera Sethi | Makeshift Magazine

Video Interview | Melissa Weigel (Moment Factory) | Kyoorius

Melissa Weigel, creator and director at Moment Factory, started as a performing artist. As a contemporary dancer, Weigel got involved with multimedia and found it be “a nice way to express herself”. Her passion for multimedia and performing arts led her to Moment Factory. Today, Weigel is a key-member in the award-winning team and specializes in creating and directing larger-than-life, integrated multimedia for stages and public spaces. Here, she talks about the weirdest briefs that she has received, her personal high-point of working with Madonna and about her best projects. 

Watch the interview here. 

Profile | Nazar Foundation | Kyoorius

Interview | Sumant Jayakrishnan | Kyoorius

Profile | Puran Bhaat - Puppeteer | Kyoorius

Feature | Synth City: Sounds of Bombay | Kyoorius

The distinctive and characteristic sounds of a place often get lost in either the overpowering visuals or the overall clatter of large cities, like Bombay. So the shopkeepers’ rhythmic chorus is often forgotten while visualizing the colorful and vibrant touristy Colaba. The restful sounds from the Haji Ali mosque, merged with the cadenced sea waves, are often lost in the noisy traffic.

In October last year, Studio X, an interactive space based in Fort in Bombay, launched an initiative ‘Synth City’ to capture and recreate the unique sounds of various areas of Bombay including Colaba Causeway, Haji Ali, Mahim, Chor Bazar and Marine Drive.

Click here to read more.