KYTA
A TRAVEL AND ART EXPERIMENT
KYTA 2019
SEPT 13 - OCT 20 / stok, leh and ladakh
The 6th annual edition of KYTA will host artists from India and the world over in one of the most unique geographies on Earth. A new story and journey begins in the village of Stok with a focus on a long-term engagement with the region for experimental practices.
LADAKH ARTS PLATFORM | 17-20 OCT
The first showcase in the region will be spread across existing venues and public spaces in the old town of Leh, as well as in our residency space in Stok.
PROGRAM PARTNERS
ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
The sixth edition of KYTA will host local, national and international resident artists working across a wide spectrum of experimental practices.
[Scroll down to view the artist profiles]
SASKIA EDENS
(SWITZERLAND)
KAUR CHIMUK
(INDIA)
ANOUSHKA MIRCHANDANI
(INDIA / USA)
MATTHIEU ROBERT-ORTIS (FRANCE)
TSERING MOTUP
(INDIA)
HOME TEAM
MEET THE ARTISTS
SASKIA EDENS
(Switzerland)
Saskia Edens was born in Geneva and now lives in Basel, Switzerland. She graduated from the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Geneva.
She has participated in numerous performance festivals and exhibitions in Europe (Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Holland, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Serbia, UK...) and in the USA, Mexico, Korea and China, including residencies in Spitzberg (Arctic Action) and in Caza D’oro, France. In 2006, Saskia Edens won the Art Competition in the Archive of the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt, and in 2007 the Alexander Clavel
Foundation Prize in Riehen. Having won the competition of Kunstkredit, the art & architecture project "Magma " was realized in 2013 as a permanent installation for the Building of Brunnmattschulhaus in Basel. Her visit to the grotto at Niaux 2010 marks the beginning of her prehistoric art exploration, which she continue in 2017 with a scholarship to Caza d'Oro, Le Mas d'Azil in France.
Her work involves video, painting, molten metal, casting techniques and performances, as well as elements such as fire/heat, water in its various states, earth/clay and breath. What prevails and underlies these different disciplines is energy, gesture, time and what allows changing aggregate states. Ice becomes water, metal solidifies, heat causes metamorphoses. In her search for fundamental insights, the artist poses questions about matter, but also about the manifestations of culture. Using experimental and archaic methods, she explores the essence of the living, which is reflected in the physical elementary, but also in the beginnings of cultural history. As a means of visualization, she takes up scientific methods and procedures of imaging, which transform the energy of the performative body into images. In many of Edens' works, the body energy is the catalyst for processes of transformation.
MATTHIEU ROBERT-ORTIS
(FRANCE)
I started pursuing sculpture, when I stopped school at Beaux-Arts in Lyon, in my second year. I bought a welding machine, and took a caddy’s (from the supermarket) on the street and created my first
sculpture. During three years, I recovered metal from the barbecue grill, the laundry tensioner and collected a good stock of metal. I made many sculptures and then one day I made a special piece - the « Elephant-Giraffes » installation and then I decided to make that bigger in a small studio. I made this sculpture in two meters and I showed it in Paris during an exhibition with many artists. We had a problem with my stand so I put my sculpture on the street. I send the sculpture during the exhibition of a tourist and one month later a video of this sculpture made 100 millions views on the web (a young man had filmed the sculpture and had published it).
After this event, I have many projects in the world and many ideas to realise in new sculptures.
KAUR CHIMUK
(INDIA)
Kaur Chimuk (India) is a transmedia performance artist & curator from Kolkata/Howrah, currently working majorly independently from Delhi & Mumbai. He Completed his study In specialization Web and Graphics Design(Graduation from PTU and Advance Diploma in Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics). As an individual artist, he majorly works in Political Illustration and performance art studies. He also engages in writing and photography (image-design) and hence in a way deal with the paradoxical case of the so-called 'performance-documentation'. He associated with Pi(independent artist collective from India), currently, Kaur majorly working with METEOR INTERNATIONAL (meteorinternational.weebly.com). Other than that he is also connected with Svergin Arte - artist collective(Italy) and official member in the organizational team KIPAF (‘KOLKATA INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL’(India's pioneer international performance art festival).
TSERING MOTUP
(INDIA)
Tsering Motup Siddho is a multidisciplinary visual artist who lives and practices in Leh. Motup was born and raised in Ladakh and Mysore; he has a BA in Fine Arts from Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore, with a specialization in Painting. Followed by a Masters of Fine Arts from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi.
Motup’s practice encompasses many different forms of expression, from performative works to video installation, photography, drawing and painting. He has taken part in group shows in Leh and Delhi, as well as performance pieces as part of the Student Biennale, Kochi Biennale, 2017, and the Pune Biennale in 2018. More recently, he works as Arts Officer at the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation, Leh, where he has curated his first exhibition ‘How much water is enough water?’
Motup’s experiences with stereotyping and its associated memories have compelled him to use his art practice to express a quest for the self in the philosophical dimension and socio- cultural context. He attempts to touch upon these sensitive issues through a personal rubric using various media in performative gestures. He uses his body to present himself and thereby talk about identity and other fundamental issues and queries regarding the socio-cultural constitution of selfhood vis-à-vis questions of identity, stereotype, memory, home and migration which spring from his own unique identity of the racial “Other” in relation to main stream Indian identities. Through his more recent body of works, Motup has attempted to juxtapose these two selves and place them in conversation with each other, just as he has attempted to put various mediums in conversation in his quest for the self which is revealed to be elusive and ridden with crisis.
Living and practicing art in Ladakh, today a vital border area for the country but one that has also been at a confluence of many trade and pilgrimage routes, has made Motup reflect on the place of cultural convergences here. He uses his visual art to reflect on the position of the socio-cultural politics of the present, to explore and discuss the varied discourses in the mainstream. Motup says ‘I wistfully returned home after my education from the mainland to find all these nuances in my work’.
ANOUSHKA
MIRCHANDANI
(INDIA / USA)
Anoushka Mirchandani is an emerging female artist living in San Francisco. Born and raised in India, Anoushka moved to the United States when she was 18 years old. Her artworks are inspired by her patchwork identity; that of being Indian, being an immigrant, being an other, being an American, being a woman, and being an artist.
Anoushka works across multiple media to create figurative artworks that embody the emotions of what it feels like to be a woman in society today. She portrays women who challenge patriarchal norms and public perception by reclaiming their bodies and demanding to be seen without sexualization, without shame and without fear.
In 2017 and 2018, Anoushka was selected as a showcase visual artist for Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco, the oldest Asian Pacific American multidisciplinary arts organization in the country. She was also selected to show her work at CA State Senator, Scott Wiener’s public offices, celebrating cultural diversity on the West Coast. She has shown her work in various galleries in San Francisco, and is in private collections across the United States, and India.
LADAKH ARTS PLATFORM
arts and media showcase: 17-20 oct
KYTA partners with LAMO (Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation) to establish a new cultural milestone in the region bringing together the traditional and the contemporary, the artisans and the artists, the local and the global.
Ladakh Arts Platform will be hosted over 4 days (17-20th Oct) across venues in the old town of Leh and the village of Stok
