Mentor Mondays: Kinnari Saraiya

Artist Resources, Artist Voices, Free, Online, Opportunities

Monday 16th May 2022 9:00am - 11:00am

Online - Zoom

Part of ‘a space’ arts expanded Artist Voices Programme, Mentor Mondays invites visual arts professionals from across the UK to hold 1-to-1 sessions with artists & artworkers from the SO postcode area.

For the first in the series of Mentor Mondays, Artist, Curator and Writer Kinnari Saraiya will be offering support, advice and feedback for SO artists. This opportunity would be particularly suited to those who are currently working in curation or are looking to expand their professional practice and explore the pathway of curating for the arts.

Mentor Mondays #1 – Monday 16th May. There are three 45 minute sessions between 9am – 11am. The sessions will take place online via Zoom.

Book your session here

 

About the Host

Kinnari Saraiya (born in Mumbai, 1998) is a Wordbuilder, Artist, Curator and Writer, but primarily, she’s a Storyteller. She works across film, interactive 3D digital immersive environments, installation, animation, sculpture, folk dance and sound which allows her to interweave complex sensorial narratives together. Her work blends memories of her ancestral self into nested colonial realities to build a third space, beyond binaries, that is virtual, transnational and diasporic. She thrives in the gaps of knowledge, the inaccuracies of interpretations, the mistranslations of language, where myth weaves around historical accounts forcing the collision of pre-humanist thought and post-humanist desire. She has won several awards since graduating in 2020 and has exhibited in over 20 exhibitions nationally and internationally, most notably at the Kyiv Biennial 2021 Allied, curated by members of the East Europe Biennial Alliance.

Earlier in 2021, she was recognised to be of exceptional promise by the Arts Council England.

She co-curated a virtual worldbuilding project called It was a Roadside Picnic / Beyond Black Orientalism with Helen Starr, an Afro-Carib curator and activist. The world is set in a Sahel-like desert, imbued with memories of pre-humanist rituals, and centered around a breathing orb whose pulsating rhythm resets your body to a calm state. It is a visualization of fluid futurism, beyond Black Orientalism, which doesn’t continue with the materially extractive and geo-political nature of current futurisms.

She currently works at BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art as a Curatorial Fellow, supported by Frieze and Deutsche Bank. Here she is curating the digital immersive commission of Sahej Rahal opening in September 2023, alongside multiple other exhibitions, delivering public programmes supporting them and leads on the Artist Development Programme. Her curatorial interests lie in decolonial approaches to imagining more equitable worlds.

Find out more about Kinnari here 

 

Access

As an organisation we actively look to reduce barriers for artists applying for our opportunities and commissions, and we are committed to being fair, accessible, transparent and inclusive.

We offer a range of access support for artists, including alternative formats for information we release and submissions we receive as well as an artist access fund; please contact us so that we can discuss your individual needs and provide appropriate support. You can email us on [email protected] or call 023 80 338 778

 

About Mentor Mondays

Mentor Mondays is an Artist Voices project which looks to support the professional development of SO artists and artworkers through engagement with a range of prominent arts professionals.

On one Monday of every month we will offer three 45 minute 1-to-1 sessions which will be available to book on a first come first serve basis via our website.

1-to-1s will be led by mentors with wide-ranging professional visual arts experience: curating, writing, fundraising, publishing, commercial art and more. These sessions are designed to support with critical feedback on work, funding advice, and developing career strategies.