STUDIO OTHERWORLDS
2019-2023, Kapashera, Delhi-Gurgaon border, supported by KHOJ international artists association
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Studio Otherworlds was conceived in response to a call for socially engaged art projects by KHOJ in 2019. At the time, I had just completed the second phase of my doctoral fieldwork on Delhi's extended urbanization. Instead of confining my research findings on land, environmental transformation, housing, migration, and social marginalization in these peripheral geographies to academic writing in books and journal articles, I sought to restitute my research to its interlocutors. This effort led me to cross-pollinate my findings into a socially engaged art project.

I collaborated with artist Sumedha Garg to translate my academic insights into a vision for socially engaged art that could challenge and reshape class and gender dynamics in the peripheries of Delhi. After securing a grant from KHOJ, Sumedha organized community walks that brought together people across social classes, ethnicities, and genders. During these walks, she began documenting the intertwined socio-ecological narratives emerging from the interstitial spaces of Kapashera.

Our next step was to create a safe space within the community—a community art studio where individuals could freely express themselves. This studio became a hub for women from a local workers' union, Sakhi Kala Manch, who began visiting daily and eventually formed a collective called Saat Saheliyan (Seven Sisters). Together, we initiated a cartographic inquiry into the planetary entanglements of Kapashera, deeply engaging with the community's lived experiences.

We explored questions such as: What drove circular migration? What placemaking practices did the workers engage in, both in the environments they inhabited and those they left behind? How were spatial planning and environmental design deployed as techniques of spatial incarceration? Where did the garments they produced end up, and where did the materials they worked with, such as cotton, originate? Using Kapashera's agrarian cadastral map as a base, we symbolically reclaimed power over land from the male landowners and handed it to the marginalized women migrants in the community.

Through this process, the project enabled us, as artists, to reflect on the possibilities and impact of socially engaged art. In a later stage, we brought the tapestry created by the women to various public spaces across Delhi. This tapestry became a powerful tool for placemaking and insurgent planning, sparking dialogues and reimagining spatial justice.