Finding KHOJ by Ritwika Ganguly
Image courtesy of the Artist and Khoj International Artists’ Association.
Finding KHOJ in the bustling, anxiety-driven streets of the Khirkee Village in Saket was the first achievement after reaching Delhi for my six-weeks long residency. This anxiety did not take much time to convert into wonder, as inside Khoj it felt like a world, different from the street that runs by it. The bathroom had a thin wall, allowing exchange between the chaos of the Khirkee village and stillness of my residence. That was the first inspiration for a work I wished to do which led me to keep a sound recorder inside the bathroom, recording noise from the streets from 5 AM to 8 AM daily. Despite the references piling up, I could not move towards making something from it as I did not want to rush with the work.
Image courtesy of the Artist and Khoj International Artists’ Association.
Mostly, when I am in a residency somewhere new, I remain open to knowing the city and in such fascination, I often rush myself to do a work rather than introspect for a while. Khoj, on the contrary, allowed me to fearlessly slow down; accept and reject ideas and not think of the open studio as an exhibition. I began working on a reference that I documented while being in a dark room workshop with the amazing Srinivas Kuruganti. It was about two hands handling some object quite effortlessly and my gap of knowledge about the object allowed me to see the movement with a certain curiosity. Developing through meaningful conversations with my fellow peers who are good listeners and reflective of their practice as well, I was encouraged to carry on with this meaningless journey of searching for a meaning. In the work, I removed the object that the hands were holding and went on to create a frame-by-frame animation of it. Further, I broke down the frames into its singular component and made storyboards for each of the drawings in an animation. I wished to study how intuitively I can attach meaning to the hands devoid of the object and how it can mould the perception of it.
Image courtesy of the Artist and Khoj International Artists’ Association.
In the open studio, I did not want the video to grab the central attention of a viewer and therefore, I left the process open, presenting each hand-drawn frame on the wall and projection-mapping the animated videos and reference videos on the storyboard plans. I also took a step forward by intervening paintings as breaks inside the sequential drawings to see how it changes the gesture’s meaning. The response to my work was absolutely diverse. While some came in looking for a work like in an exhibition, with a specific theme attached to it, others were mostly interested with the ambiguity they sensed in my studio. As a silent observer, I saw viewers freeing their mind by drawing hands themselves, writing all they felt on my notebook, having the softened ‘Hide and Seek’ biscuit from the table and trying to act out the gestures that they saw in the drawings, in order to find its meaning.
Image courtesy of the Artist and Khoj International Artists’ Association.
Khoj Peers Residency made me feel free, critical and enriched with new understandings about my way of thinking. Meeting with new people every day, discussing with experienced and senior artists and spending the six-weeks with my five wonderful peers ( we were known as the ‘quiet bunch’ as we are introverts, quite comfortable with each other’s presence) made everything memorable and important for my life as well as my practice.
Ritwika Ganguly is a visual artist based in Vadodara whose practice spans painting, drawing, and animation. She completed her BFA at Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University and her MVA at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda, and was a recipient of the Peers Residency, KHOJ, International Artists’ Association, New Delhi (2025).
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