Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

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Curator Shruti Ramlingaiah developed this proposal for the 2022 Curatorial Intensive in Kampala.


Home: Nowhere and Everywhere will include an exhibition, publication compiled viadiscussion forums, and interviews that address the concept of home in the 21st century. Home is not limited to the ideas of the constant/stable; it also concerns the movement of people. Migration has a history that involves partition, individual choices, indentured labor, and striving for a better life – all activities shaped by political and cultural influences. Migration is also an outcome of habitat alteration, climate change, and advancements in human infrastructure.

The concerns of stability and belonging usually revolve around the idea of ahome/house. I am interested in the stories and fictions that travel with people and communities in different forms, for example what resides in sound, smell, memories and text, in stories of the movement of people and their journeys. A few questions this project poses are: How do we experience home today? What do belonging and loss mean to us in these times of exodus and in ubiquitous virtual presence? Apart from the histories of movement, how have people’s current choices and ideas of movement shifted? This proposal will focus on the idea of movement in South Asia with a focus on India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 2000 through the post- (and ongoing) COVID experience of being homebound and which surrounds us with anxieties to move. 

The exhibition and accompanying programs explore the representation and concept of home in a South Asian context. What interests me are contemporary artists' interdisciplinary practices that reveal untold stories, in addition to oral histories that unfold experiential anecdotes relating to representations of home. These questions could be explored through literary text, images, popular culture, sound, and performance around the idea of the movement of people through history and collective memories. I am interested in the representation of home in this advanced globalized society and its impact on individual and collective thought. I am also engaged with artists' works related to the history of migration, archives, and individual experiences. 

Programming: As a run-up to the exhibition, the project will include a forum (online and in-person) to exchange and discuss the meanings of home in recent times. A part of the forum and associated activities will cover the historical artistic practices around home and household in literature and visual media. I will also conduct conversations among researchers, artists, poets, and cultural organisers in India. These conversations can be the point of departure for collaborations as much as for a dialogue and as responses, documents, and texts that will become part of the exhibition space in the future.

Location: The exhibition will be proposed for a white cube gallery space and art foundation for the forum and collaboration.