Blogs Archive - Take Art Magazine

Writing Across and Down : Transcribing and Describing

Published on 07 May 2025

“Do you mind if I record?” Interviewing podcasters and oral historians of visual art in Switzerland has been an enriching exercise. Sometimes I record the conversation on my phone. Other times, I find that writing down in shorthand helps keep the flow authentic. As a writer and researcher, I often use interviews as raw material …

Continue reading "Writing Across and Down : Transcribing and Describing"

Three Formats of Aural Writing

Published on 29 April 2025

This week had a number of highlights in terms of thinking through my research proposal. In a throwback to school field trips, our residency director took all us residents of Villa Sträuli to the Kunsthaus Zürich, to view a retrospective of Roman Signer, one of the most significant Swiss conceptual artists. We scattered across the …

Continue reading "Three Formats of Aural Writing"

From the Ghor to the Gallery: Liberating the Feminine Realm in Indian Art

Published on 26 April 2025

From the Ghor to the Gallery: Liberating the Feminine Realm in Indian Art In one of his seminal essays, Partha Chatterjee (Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India) argues that Indian nationalism, in its resistance to British colonialism and Western modernity, constructed a rigid ideal of womanhood that ultimately reinforced a new patriarchal …

Continue reading "From the Ghor to the Gallery: Liberating the Feminine Realm in Indian Art"

“Listening In and Finding Balance”

Published on 22 April 2025

This is my first week’s dispatch from the AWA residency at Villa Sträuli in Winterthur, supported by Pro Helvetia and TAKE On Art. I have enjoyed scrumptious cake with my co-residents, and fantastic home-cooked dinner with my research guide in Zürich. Before arriving in Winterthur, my fantasies of Switzerland were limned with the Kodak patina …

Continue reading "“Listening In and Finding Balance”"

Open Studio: museum of silence, a visual essay on intergenerational silence between women

Published on 10 June 2024

This week I had an open studio where I exhibited the tactile engagement I have been toiling with past few weeks here. I saw the Museum of Silence, that so far existed in a word document and inside the walls of my studio, now exhibited to the world. Gracefully hung in the open studio of …

Continue reading "Open Studio: museum of silence, a visual essay on intergenerational silence between women"

Home and the world

Published on 28 May 2024

The week truly ran trepidations and renditions of Tagore’s Home and the World. The more I soared into the world, the more I unearthed the layers within. The more vastness I was led into, the more depth I was met with. I read this novel years ago, but on this trip, the tradition and modernity …

Continue reading "Home and the world"

Embroidering Silence

Published on 21 May 2024

This week, my research on intergenerational silence between women, took a rather tactile turn. I began to embroider the essay. The textiles, the tactility of a cloth, especially something as a saree- which does not come from any kind of isolation, but rather a very rich historical foregrounding of its own in the culture, present …

Continue reading "Embroidering Silence"

On Resting Not Knowing Things: Reclaiming Self

Published on 20 May 2024

I am slowly learning that I can live without having a problem to solve or a mountain to climb. I am slowly learning to positively disintegrate from my hyper achieving cells and just enjoying where I am, how far I have come. Maybe it is possible to just simply observe. Just simply watch and not …

Continue reading "On Resting Not Knowing Things: Reclaiming Self"

A Month Here: Unpacking the Baggage

Published on 13 May 2024

When I came to Switzerland, I carried with me a few odd kinds of silences. The residency was kind enough to afford these to me as a research question that I could then carry in the palm of my hand, like a rare, exotic, regional flower from homeland. But what it really was, was an …

Continue reading "A Month Here: Unpacking the Baggage"

My second week in Switzerland

Published on 23 April 2024

My second week here had me see the tiny shoot of my new pursuit sprout out. Very fresh and mint, I saw tiny ideas surface with either a lawn or a forest, somewhere, within it. My walks around the city found me strolling into a very large fabric store several times and I bought myself …

Continue reading "My second week in Switzerland"

1 2 3 Next