Between Kismet and Karma

Between Kismet and Karma: South Asian Women Artists Respond to Conflict is a pioneering, multifaceted programme, exploring how conflict operates within different but interconnecting sites: Home; Bodies; Cities; Borders/Nation; Artist/Artisan/Activist.

The programme has been conceived through a curatorial partnership between Shisha, the international agency for contemporary South Asian crafts and visual arts and the University of Leeds, supported by an AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship. It has been delivered in collaboration with seven high profile cultural organisations nationally and internationally.

The programme addresses everyday aspects of life in South Asia that people negotiate and challenge. Historically, people here have not only identified with their own nation but also with displaced communities across postcolonial states. Increasing urbanisation across South Asia has led to competition over scarce resources in the face of environmental degradation. Communities are also divided along gender, ethnicity, religion and class politics which constantly threaten inter-communal harmony.

South Asian women live between and within these multiple sites of conflict. In addition, their experience of conflict is intensified by how, since the colonial period, they have been caught in the relationship between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’. Yet women have retained a powerful creative force, often drawing on that very relationship, in responding to historical and contemporary pressures. Women artists from South Asia play with and subvert how the woman’s body, and her place in the wider world, has constantly been contested and negotiated. Their artwork transforms women from being the focus of representation to those who represent, create and comment. In the context of this programme, artists reflect on conflict, its memories, and the potential of art to provide challenging forms of healing, critique and expression.

Between Kismet and Karma will include a range of art forms such as site-specific interventions, works on paper, video and audio installations, as well as dynamic collaborations between artists. It is a space for artists to explore and challenge their own creative practices and highlight the complexities of femininity and creativity in South Asia.

The programme includes an exhibition, residency series, symposium, film festival, art intervention programme and associated publications delivered through the partner venues. The following events will take place in different cities across the UK from January to May 2010.