Anita Agarwal

I am a multidisciplinary visual artist from India based in London. Working across performance, moving-image, sound, mark making, sculptural installations, and print. Sustainability plays a decisive factor in my procedures of creating and being.

My practice is dialogical, socially engaged and activist in its nature and approach. My socially engaged practice investigates alternative models of artistic self-organisation, active spectatorship, participation, communication, social interaction, and community-building, with a focus on artistic labour and craft in relation to sustainable ways of creating and being.

Archives and social histories inform a provocative approach to storytelling across mediums as an artist I am interested in reviewing , which, and how stories are being told, and by whom.

This practice helps me question the socio-political status-quo through a feminist lens. My work interrogates and pushes the socio-political parameters experienced in day-to-day life it could be my own lived experience or of others. Audre Lorde, Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, Sara Ahmed, Grant H. Kester, and Homi Bhabha have influenced and inspired my artistic journey.

I call myself a ‘ Respons(able) ‘artist; someone once told me that responsible means being able to respond. As a visual artist, I respond to an event, a site, or a provocation through my work. My response although intuitive is built on a strong foundation of comprehensive research, to sieve out ‘any emotional hyperbole, false consciousness, madness or the perfunctory navel-gazing of the self -absorbed’. Audre Lorde writes that, ‘emotions are one’s political and life resources, and that we must make use of our anger/our frustrations, letting the anger spill out into a poem or a text. And that, is the point of departure for any of my work, a poem, or a text which later develops and morphs into other formats.

I strive to achieve playfulness and humour in my works, as through humour it is possible to collide into spaces, allowing people to relax and ease out into areas that would otherwise be difficult and awkward to navigate.

Having travelled and lived in diverse cultures and geographies, I often explore the intersections, positions, and overlaps within cultures. I am basically a storyteller intent in creating new collective narratives teased out from the past to see where how they intersect with the present, as a result help imagine and create evolved new worlds.

Art provides me with an opportunity to engage fiercely with the world through the lens of indigenous philosophies of universality and oneness from my Asian/Indian roots, applicable not only to the living, breathing beings but also the non-living. Revolutionary thinkers like Donna Haraway, Bell Hooks, Silvia Federici are beacons for my practice-led- research providing a 3rd plane/axis in kinship and assimilation.

There is a continual search to find and create new language(mediums) and to create exhibitions/workshop spaces where fearless responses can be made possible, questioning and challenging the prevalent power dynamics. My curatorial initiatives collaboratively executed- SW11ndows and Ap.aart.ment77, enquire and re-evaluate where and how art can be experienced, and by whom.

CV-

2019-2021 Masters in Contemporary Art Practices—Public sphere pathway, Royal College of Arts, London

2018-2019 Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts, Chelsea College of Arts and Design, UAL.

September-Jan 20, 2025: ReRooted Residency Program supported by Arbeit Studio @Hackney Wick, London.

December 8, 2024: 'Let's Be Eco-Logical' Workshop free for the public, Eco-dyeing fabrics with Indigo and Cochineal, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by Arbeit Studio @ Hackney Wick, London.

November 23, 2024: 'Let's Be Eco-Logical' workshop free for the public, sonic-jamming and momo-printing with single-use plastics, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by Arbeit Studio @ Hackney Wick, London.

November 16, 2024: 'Let's Be Eco-Logical' workshop free for the public: eco-printing on fabric with leaves and flowers, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by ArbeitStudio @Hackney Wick, London.

October 17, 2024: 'Let's be Eco-Logical' workshop free for the public, eco-printing on fabric with kitchen waste, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by ArbeitStudio @Hackney Wick, London.

Jan 19-19 Feb 2024: Group exhibition 'A Conversation With Water,' supported by Hypha Studio @Stratford, London.

March-May 2023: Residency PAiR; The Hive-Perivale Library, London. An art commission executed through a public-sphere-based engagement with the local communities through a set of six workshops. These socially engaged, participatory workshops designed and facilitated by the artist helped create the installation ‘Under the Canopy of Our Stories’.

April 2023: Art performance 'I—The Story’ and installation of the Robe in the exhibition Altered Planes at Meter Squared Studios, West Kensington, London.

March 24-26: MI ‘River (She/he/her/him/it)’ and installation and workshop, ‘Let Me Share…/Did You Know…’ in ‘Fly and Flock’ exhibition by the Lunchbox Collective, Chisenhale Studio, London, E3 5QZ.

March 2023: Art Performance, ‘Fair Enough?’, UAL Alumni of Colour Association (AoCA) Exhibition: Diaspora and Belonging; Mother London, 10 Redchurch Street, London.
October 2022: 'Text as an Image,' Jolly Adda Gallery, Kanjurmarg, Mumbai, India
September 2022: Magnificences, Amersham Arms, Take Courage Gallery, New Cross, London.
September 2021: Pause. Fervour. Reflections on a Pandemic
August 2021: AP.AART.MENT77, a pop-up residency initiated and curated collaboratively, London.
August 2021: Multiple Participatory Art Performances for the Public, The Clapham Park ArtBank, Clapham Park Cube.
July 2021: RCA 2021 Cromwell Place Gallery, London.
March 2021: Sound and spoken text work on Montez Radio.
March 2021: An online festival, Everything for Ever.
March 2021: ‘State of the Art', online symposium, London.
February 2021: Co-curated a physical show, ‘SW11ndows,’ in London.
January 2021: ‘This Too Shall Pass,’ 20th-floor balcony, London.
December 2020: ‘CAPbaret', Twitch.
October 2020: 'MIND THE GAP,' 20th floor balcony, London.
August 2020: SVA Gallery, Stroud, England.
May 2020: 302_direct, CAP festival.
May 2020: MI, ICA/LUX.
May 2020: Instagram takeover, @low_res_camera_roll
May 2020: Symposium: The Museum without a Public
March 2020: Hanover Space Project, Peckham, London.
February 2020: The WIP Show, RCA, London.
November 2019: Workshop with PSC, Coventry Biennial, U.K.
June 2019: The Parade Ground, The Degree Show, Chelsea College.
May 2019: Safehouse 1 & 2, Copeland Road, London.
May 2019: The Cookhouse Gallery, London.
March 2019: Art #23 Gallery, Bermondsey, London.
March 2019: ‘Cabaret’ Canteen Annexe, Chelsea College, London.
February 2019: Triangle Space Gallery, London.
December 2018: Chelsea college, Mixed medium installation
October 2018: ‘Parallax’, Poland.