Talks
A Walk on the Wild Side: Women’s Safety in Public and Private Spaces
Akhila Krishnan, Indu Antony, Shilpa Vijayakrishnan
As part of MAP’s Women in Art and Culture series, MAP presents a talk with multi-disciplinary designer and director Akhila Krishnan (representing Kadak Collective) and visual artist Indu Antony.
Moderated by Shilpa Vijayakrishnan who leads the Education & Outreach programming at MAP, the talk will explore the safety of women in public and private spaces, the politics of spectatorship and the importance of art as a tool for campaigning, among other things. It will also examine the significance, processes and challenges of putting together collective and community based projects.
Akhila Krishnan
Multi-disciplinary Designer and Director
Akhila Krishnan is a multi-disciplinary designer and director working across the fields of projection design for live experience, VR, moving image, fine art, graphic narrative, collaborative practice and education of 1600 backers all over the world.
Akhila graduated from the Royal College of Art and the National Institute of Design. She was also an exchange student at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. She was recently awarded the ‘Time N Eye Bursary’ and ‘Alan James Bursary’ (in collaboration with the Brazilian/English musical duo Lambrego.)
She is a member of the Kadak Collective, currently working as Co-Editor & Project Producer on ‘The Bystander Anthology’, a path breaking comics and graphic narrative anthology project featuring the work of over 50 creators of South Asian origin based across 13 countries, in web and print. ‘The Bystander Anthology’ came to life via Kickstarter, raising £48200 in 40 days. It is currently shipping to backers worldwide.
Indu Antony
Transdisciplinary Artist
Indu Antony is a transdisciplinary artist based out of Bangalore and Kerala, India.
Her work primarily revolves around the notion of spaces and their intangible character in relation to the gendered body as a site of representation by understanding feministic stands which gives way to performances and installations. Her recent works use a lot of her hair as a metaphor for memory.
She recently started her own self-publishing initiative called Mazhi Books under which she has published her first book, ‘Why can’t bras have buttons?’ which was the runners up for ‘Al Kazi photo book of the year ‘(2020), and ‘Photo book of the year’ (2021) at Fast Forward. Her second book ‘Directory of the outsiders’ won the Experimental Co-operative Art Grant (2020). Her community and public art project ‘Cecilia’ed’ received the Public Art Grant by FICA in 2019. She also won the Toto funds Award for photography for the year 2011.
Indu Antony has participated in several group exhibitions including the Chennai Photo Biennale 2019; Serendipity Arts Festival, 2018; Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Collateral), 2018-19; Foto Fest Biennale, Houston, 2018; Queer Asia Photo Exhibition, London, 2017 and Photo Kathmandu, Nepal, 2015.
Shilpa Vijayakrishnan (Moderator)
Senior Manager - Education & Outreach (MAP)
Shilpa Vijayakrishnan has led the Education & Outreach Department at MAP since its conception, during the course of which she has curated over five exhibitions specially designed for younger audiences, as well as conceptualised and facilitated a range of programmes for schools, children and adults. Former editor of the Tasveer Journal, her articles have been published in publications including the eponymous print edition of the Tasveer Journal, ‘Maharanis: Royal Women of India’, ‘Gardens of the Mind: Swapak Nayak and Gilles Bensimon’ and ‘Figures in Time: Bourne & Shepherd’.
She holds a postgraduate degree in Arts & Aesthetics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and has curated online narratives for MAP on the Google Arts & Culture platform on a range of subjects including Women in Hindi Cinema and the Pichwai painting tradition, among others.
