I Promise The Bearer…

Premiering in India for the first time, this solo performance by Anuja Ghosalkar takes us through the everyday journey of a female artist in India — her dreams, desires, and struggles of being an artist in a rapidly changing social and political landscape.

The show uses the stereotypes of an artist’s life, playfully — praying for a grant, meetings with funders, and an auction. The light-hearted register of what it means to be an artist, in the murky terrain of arts funding, grant applications, collectors, curators, gatekeepers and the risk involved in questioning power structures, gives way to the show’s central question – is money the greatest object of fiction? For which we trade lives, bodies, loves?

This performance was part of the White Money project initiated by Flinnworks, in 2021. The show was made during the second wave of the pandemic. It opened at Sophiensale, Berlin in November 2021.

Conceived and Performed by: Anuja Ghosalkar
Written by: Ashutosh Potdar and Anuja Ghosalkar
Visual Artist and Design: Debanshu Bhaumik
Performance Design: Rebecca Spurgeon
Light Design: Vikrant Thakar
Visual Design and Execution: Aliasger Dhariwala
Costume Design: Rency Philip
Lithography Printing: Pagal Canvas Backyard
Lithographs & Woodcuts Videos: Atelier Prati
Production: Purvi Rajpuria