ABHISHEK KHEDEKAR Tamasha

Description

ABHISHEK KHEDEKAR Tamasha. The inaugural winner of the Publishing Performance residency and book award uses sculpture, collage and reappropriation to capture the synaesthesia of a rural Indian working-class spectacle.

Indian artist Abhishek Khedekar’s experimental docu-fiction follows a 100-person nomadic troupe of Dalit ‘families’ performing Tamasha: a travelling form of performance combining dance, music, and visual art dating back to the 1800s. As post-independence India moved away from rural dance and song forms, Tamasha became stigmatised, polarised and relegated in Indian society. Criss-crossing the state of Maharashtra, Khedekar’s images dive into the complexity of this sociocultural fabric with a dizzying array of artistic techniques by utilising archival material, collage, documentary photography, performance, sound and video.

Khedekar’s bricolage of experimental visual narratives elevates the make-do, unpretentious attitude of Tamasha performance into a unique aesthetic of song, community and expression: situating Tamasha’s traditions in modern India.

Loose Joints Publishing

Loose Joints is an independent publishing house collaborating with leading and emerging artists on contemporary approaches to photography in book form. Loose Joints circulates new visual perspectives through a dedicated list seeking to elevate underrepresented voices in photographic discourse.

Their holistic approach to publishing allows them to work in close collaboration with artists from start to finish, with all design, editing and production done in-house.

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