Dharmendra Prasad on Home-Not-Alone Residency in India

Winner of the 2019 Emerging Artist Award, Dharmendra Prasad is an artist based in Guwahati. The award is granted annually by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) in collaboration with Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and seeks to promote young artists who are studying or practising in India, and demonstrate extraordinary skill and promise in the visual arts.

Following reflections with Pro Helvetia offices across the world, we have replaced residencies involving travel with a project called the ‘Home Not Alone’ residencies. Here, artists across the world, including Indian visual artist Dharmendra Prasad, aim to realise projects while “staying at home”. Dharmendra will be realising his project “Carebiosphere” while staying in Buxar. Through this project Dharmendra will remotely examine Swiss agrarian practices alongside those in Buxar to see how agragrian knowledge of the past can be brought into the present.

Dharmendra has a BFA in Painting from Govt. College of Arts and Crafts, Guwahati. He also did his MFA in Painting from the SN School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. He has been part of Artist Residencies such as Khoj PEERS (2018); Pepper House Art Residency, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018); and Dharti Arts Residency, Serendipity Arts Foundation, New Delhi (2019). Dharmendra has recently exhibited his work at A-Part: Stories of Lands & Lines (2019); Pepper House Residency Exhibition as part of Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018-19; CIMA Award Exhibition (2019); Collection Bureau: A Pollinator Project at India Art Fair 2018. He has also shown his work previously at Harmony at Easel Art Gallery, Guwahati (2013); CONFLUENCE at Anga Art Collective, Guwahati (2012). His work also includes durational and collective projects.

Rolling through orality, toil, winds, dimensions, and horizon, Dharmendra Prasad harvests imaginations, memories, times, change and future that are stored as residues in the backyard of life’s goal and future.

Follow Dharmendra Prasad on his instagram @unhorizoning