Sandeep TK on Studio Residency at Atelier Mondial

Let Me Add Something in My Own Melody, Sandeep as Pokkan who braided coconut leaves for huts.

Sandeep TK is a lens-based artist from Thalassery, Kerala, living and working in Bangalore. His practice involves photography, text and videos which often involves himself and focuses on the idea of human relationships, space and memory through personal experience and exploration of his identity and surroundings.

His ongoing works include “Declaration of Empathy”, a photographic project dedicated to marginalised individuals. In this project, Sandeep asked members from the transgender community to imagine an alternative life they could have achieved if they were able to finish their education and photographed the resulting performance.

In “Singularity”, Sandeep explores a relationship and its absence through the motif of a chair. “I walked out of his life after six months, I left the town and the only thing I want to take away with me was that chair,” says the artist. “How are you? I am fine” is a video rendition of the same project.

“Let Me Add Something in My Own Melody” is another ongoing project. Here, Sandeep is making self-portraits in reference with the stories from the OBC, SC and ST communities that he heard from his mother and his grandmother, the stories his grandmother heard from her grandmother, and his friends who belong to these marginalised communities. When Basel Mission came to Malabar, they employed people from these communities. The Commonwealth Trust was also started by Basel Mission. While at Atelier Mondial in Basel, Sandeep hopes to explore the Basel Mission’s ties with the Thiyya community to which Sandeep also belongs.

Follow Sandeep TK on Instagram.