ART MURMUR X GUFTGU
From October to December 2024, Art South Asia Project and Offset Projects presented “Art Murmur x Guftgu”, a dynamic programme offering an in-depth understanding of the last two decades of movements in art and art book publishing across South Asia. The series will explore the evolution of these practices and the global afterlives of publications, with discussions on publishing shifts, artists’ books, editing, writing, and reaching global audiences.
The programme consisted of three themes:
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Publishing Shifts South Asia: The first theme presented ideas and emerging methodologies practiced by publishers in South Asia to bring urgent voices and ideologies to the forefront of the publishing space in the region.
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The Artist Book: The second theme engaged with the practice of book-making and its experimentation and growth for artists in South Asia. Working with playful and research-driven approaches, the book language has become a part of multiple collectives and individual artists’ practices, offering new methods and expanding the possibilities of artistic expression.
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Navigating Global Audiences: The final section examines the challenges in the dissemination of art and artists' books from South Asia. The talk and written contributions address issues and challenges in the distribution of regionally produced printed matter and the possibilities for making local contexts resonate internationally.
The contributions towards the programme “Art Murmur x Guftgu” have been archived as recorded talks and written texts accessible on ASAP and Offset Projects websites. The written texts have been compiled alongside edited transcripts into specially designed e-books by Sanket Jadia.
These three e-books are created specifically for this programme and have been published between February to March 2025 featuring responses from our writers to specific prompts relating to their respective subjects. Designed by Sanket Jadia, each of these downloadable publications also contain the profiles of the institutions and speakers involved and include a QR code to access the talks archive.
ONLINE TALKS
Publishing Shifts South Asia:
Speakers: Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati (Nepal Picture Library, Nepal) & Yogesh Maitreya (Panther’s Paw, India)
Talk Date: Tuesday 22nd October
The Artist Book:
Speakers: Sohrab Hura (Artist and UGLY DOG, India) & Abdul Halik Azeez (Artist and The Packet, Sri Lanka)
Talk Date: Friday 29th November
Navigating Global Audiences:
Speakers: Sarasija Subramanian (Reliable Copy, India) & Saira Ansari (Misk Art Institute, Riyadh/KSA)
Talk Date: Thursday 12 December
WRITING COMMISSIONS
Publishing Shifts South Asia:
Writers: Rahaab Allana (Alkazi Foundation, India) & Sharmini Pereira (Raking Leaves, and Museum of Modern Contemporary Art Sri Lanka)
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The Artist Book:
Writers: Zahra Malkani & Shahana Rajani (Karachi LaJamia & Exhausted Geographies, Pakistan)
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Navigating Global Audiences:
Writers: Arifur Rahman Munir (Nokta, Bangladesh) & Rashmi Ruth Devadasan (Blaft Publications, India)
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This programme is supported by the Faizal & Shabana Foundation and QissaGoi.
PARTNER BIOS
Offset Projects is a curatorial initiative by Anshika Varma and has been actively working with contemporary practices in photography through experience-led formats with an emphasis on book-making. The initiative exists within the form of a fluid collective, inviting collaborators to play and experiment within its unstructured identity. It fosters collaboration- curating exhibitions and offering artist talks, workshops, residencies, reading rooms, and decentralised formats of publishing. Its publishing ethos comes from the urgency to work with the book as a site of companionship and support, centering relationship-building as the core tenet of building work. The core engagement for the initiative functions through its publicly accessible photo-book library to explore the various engagements and sociological impact of receiving the world through creative expressions in lens media.
Offset Projects functions with a focus on encouraging and platforming the evolving visual language in South Asia and beyond. We believe that story telling lies at the heart of human creative energy and would like to make a space for collective engagement, meaningful critique and reflective inquiry.
https://offsetprojects.in/
https://www.instagram.com/offsetprojects/?hl=en
Sanket Jadia is a Delhi-based visual artist, graphic designer, and educator, whose work delves into how narratives and counter-narratives shape public discourse around moments of historical violence. A recipient of the Inlaks Fine Arts Award and featured in Forbes 30 Under 30, Sanket has served as an Artist-in-Residence at Khoj International Artists’ Association and participated in residencies like Blurring Boundaries (2020) and Khoj Peers. His group exhibitions include Simulacrum (2022), Pune Biennale (2017), Level 01 (2016), and Activating Space (2015).
