The 2022/23 Minerva Residency saw artist duo from India Ayesha Singh and Jyothidas K.V. live and work in Van Gogh House over the months of July 2022 and January 2023.

The 2022/23 Minerva Residency saw artist duo Ayesha Singh and Jyothidas K.V. live and work in Van Gogh House over the months of July 2022 and January 2023.

Ayesha Singh’s practice subverts socio-political hierarchies and highlights the assertion of established systems of power in architecture. She works across video, sculpture, installation, performance, and drawings to create sites of discourse and record, to question the assumed permanence of private and public buildings, and the histories that are omitted during construction, restoration, and destruction.

Jyothidas K.V is a visual artist and researcher whose practice varies from drawing-based installations, photographs, text, prints, to food, performances and gatherings. His works deal with mutations of bodies under neoliberalism, the transmogrification of the edges of cities, and his performances try to locate acts of belonging and displacements.

Their collaborative work stems out of written conversational exchanges that include text and poetry, diving into archives, objects, and physical fragments of cities and sites where their worlds encounter contexts that are site-specific.

During their residency at Van Gogh House, the pair worked collaboratively between London and Delhi, conducting a series of interventions and performances titled ‘Ingredients of Encounters: Recipes of Reciprocations’. Exploring the collection at Van Gogh House, the artists discovered the handwriting samples of James Wigmore. ​​Wigmore’s phrase ‘Carefully attend’ was used by Ayesha and Jyothidas as a starting point for the concrete poetry developed during their residency. They produced written conversational exchanges including text and poetry collectively read at two gatherings. Each artist brought one secret historical ingredient that was disclosed to another during the residency where the ingredients met stimulants derived from the house archives and its present context, to understand their histories and its trajectories.

This process included informal studio visits and crits from curators Fatos Ustek and Hammad Nasar to support the development of their work and research during their time in London. Previous iterations of their collaborative series have been held at Dimensions Variable, Little Haiti, Miami, USA in 2021; and Shrine Empire, New Delhi, India in 2019.

This residency was supported by Minerva Executive Search.

Ayesha and Jyothidas were nominated by Prameya Art Foundation and their application was chosen by a panel made up of Livia Wang, Creative Director of Van Gogh House, Anna Bromwich, Director of Programmes and Ben Tucker, Founder of Minerva. Many thanks to the visiting critics for this residency, Fatoş Üstek and Hammad Nasar.

Recipoems: Trails of Reciprocity

During the residency, Ayesha welcomed members of the public to a participatory performance sharing written and uttered words, fragments of recipes, and refreshments that tell stories. Open to all ages, this sharing event took place at Myatt’s Fields roundhouse with work involving performance, poetry, prints, and potions. 

Members of the public took turns to read a line from the artists’ posters printed in all directions with their concrete poetry, so that the audience had to turn the paper in doing so. Passing a bundle of ingredients around the circle transferring its weight from person to person, feeling the contents move and loosen as it is handled. The bundle was packed with ingredients to be served the following day at the artists’ tea time feast, and as the audience held and warmed it, the air became pungent with spices.

“Van Gogh House is an exemplary small institution that shows the value in meticulous restoration of cultural assets and following it up with very creative and engaging programming which contributes to the historicity of the place as well as the cultural fabric of its location. ” – Jyothidas K.V.

Carefully Attend: A Tea Time Feast

The artists held a tea-time feast at Van Gogh House on the last day of their residency. Ayesha hosted a second collaborative reading performance, encouraging the audience to read from a poem meandering around an A3 poster. She served potli filled with sweet and savoury snacks, two ‘potions’,  boiled cassava and chai.

Ingredients of Encounter: A participatory performance

Participants were invited to bring an “ingredient”, anything edible (or not), with a story. The performance then sifted through foods and their historical associations with our understanding of culture, identity, relationships, navigation, trade, memory and power, culminating in a meal cooked by Jyothidas. A fantastic end to the residency! 

This residency was supported by Minerva Executive Search.