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Collaboration as Practice

By 20th January 2024March 24th, 2024Conversations

Responding to an urgency for materializing and facilitating individual and collective expressions of shared concerns and understanding, Northeast Lightbox started as an address for a shared call for action in the Northeastern states of India.

Over time, Lightbox evolved as a research platform, collectively facilitating more accessibility towards visual arts in the region and generating new audiences. With a focus on regional archives that invite nuanced insights and challenge overlooked socio-political perceptions, Lightbox delves into narratives of mobilization groups and social work organisations.

Intertwining artistic speculations with evidentiary records, Lightbox fosters transdisciplinary engagements as an active and ongoing practice towards activating locally rooted details. In process, Lightbox seeks to cultivate inclusive spaces for dialogue and exchange between practitioners and audiences through interventions, workshops and exhibitions.

Hrishikesh Chowdhury is a photographer from Guwahati and co-founder of the artist collective Northeast Lightbox. With a background in social work, Hrishikesh’s interest lies in exploring regional histories and urban forms and their relationship with the larger society we live in. He primarily works with photographs, archives, text and oral histories as a medium of his practice.

Devadeep Gupta’s practice develops as an investigation on regional ecological uncertainties by contesting associated mainstream perspectives. Through performative actions inspired by site-specific vernacular occurrences, he explores nuances of the relationship between people and their land. Functioning in the intersectionality of conceptual and documentary, the outtakes of his process are illustrated through mediums of film, image and sculpture. Devadeep completed his MFA from Bauhaus University, Germany, and is currently practicing in Assam. He is co-founder at Northeast Lightbox.

Respondent: Amrita Gupta (Art Historian and Co-director at CASP).

January 20th, 2024 | 6.00 pm – 7.30 pm IST on Zoom | Open to all.

Program Highlights