Since this exhibition is being organized as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the College of Fine Arts Kerala, I have selected both the books keeping in mind the academic space of the exhibition as well as the target audience.
Both the books focus on the notion of memories and experiencesof places from the viewpoint of the artist, in an academic context from different parts of the world. Both projects were part of international artist residency programs, affiliated to universities in the U.K. and Hungary respectively.
Artist: Nidhi Khurana
Title of Book 1: a walk through Batemans
Size: 22.5X16.5 cm folded (89x65cm full)
Medium: Color stickers on handmade paper
Year: 2024
Description: ‘A walk through Batemans’, is the second dummy of the book created for the exhibition ‘Unshelving the Memories’, being organized as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the College of Fine Arts Kerala. The original dummy was created during the virtual artist residency that was a part of the 2023-25 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research project Networking international and transnational approaches to contemporary art in heritage practice, led by Rebecca Farley & Judith King from Newcastle University U.K.
My residency and this book are centered around Batemans, the home of Rudyard Kipling (in Sussex, U.K.) born in India in 1865. I was initially pulled into Kipling’s story due to this connection with Allahabad, my hometown. The virtual nature of the residency allowed me to ‘focus on context rather than the physicality’ and ‘led me to discover other aspects of Kipling’s life and work’. At Batemans we see reflections of the writer’s inner world, which in his absence is all we have access to. By inner world I mean the house he inhabited but also, the universe in his head, a place for manifestation of thought. I want to reflect on how Kipling’s personality was moulded by his time in India as a child. To get an idea of his inner world by reading the stories he wrote. I interviewed Professor Harish Trivedi, co-author of the book, “Kipling in India, India in Kipling”. This compilation of essays about Rudyard Kipling by scholars from across the world became a kind of guide for me to explore the work of the writer. Since the residency was virtual, the form and folding of the book allow for the confusion in my mind to unfold. The architecture of the book creates an organic display mechanism. The orientation is much like access to the house, approachable from all sides. The original dummy is based on a two-hour virtual tour of Bateman’s by Freddie Matthews and Kiki Claxton.
The book is accompanied by the report of the project that published the images of my artworks.
This work was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Newcastle University, with additional in-kind support from residency hosts and our project partners, Arts & Heritage, Artist’s Studio Museum Network, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, National Trust.
Report written by: Rebecca Farley & Judith King
https://research.ncl.ac.uk/transnationalartinheritagenetwork/
Published by Newcastle University April 2025
Artist: Nidhi Khurana
Title of Book 2: October in Budapest
Size: 17X13 cm folded (134.5x 25.6 cm full)
Medium: Color stickers on handmade paper
Year: 2024
Description: This book was created to re-create the memories of Budapest after I got back from a five-month artist residency as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University, Budapest between 2023-24. I was invited back to exhibit my work at the University gallery in March 2025 and I converted the same images into postcards for the visitors. The book holds a poem that I wrote for the city when I arrived in Budapest in October 2023. Upon my arrival I was struck by the location of the Wallenberg guest house and the University office across the Danube on the Pest Side. The daily ritual of crossing the Duna made me think about water. When I returned to India, I created the cyanotypes used in the book. The poem is a written memory of October 2023 and the cyanotypes are visual memories of the places I visited. All kinds of memories come together to create the feeling of Budapest.
The book is accompanied by the Annual report Yearbook 2023-24 of the Institute for Advanced Study that published the cyanotype images.
This work was funded by the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
