Travelling Plants is a transdisciplinary project curated by Lina Vincent and led by the Goethe Institut Chennai, in collaboration with the Alliance Française of Madras and the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP).
A multiphase project commencing with a residency at IFP and culminating with a series of exhibitions across India and Sri Lanka, Travelling Plants brings together five visual and research-based artists Karolina Grzywnowicz (Germany), Wendy Therméa (Reunion Island, France), Danushka Marasinghe (Sri Lanka), Waylon D’souza (India) and Rashmimala (India) selected on the basis on their artistic practises intersecting with the natural world.
Lina is an independent art historian and curator with two decades experience in arts management. She has curated numerous exhibitions with galleries across India and contributes to publications on art history and contemporary cultural practices. Lina has a BFA in printmaking from Bangalore University and MFA in Art History from the same institution.
Lina is an independent art historian and curator with two decades experience in arts management. Since 2009, Lina has worked on multi-layered projects that highlighted plural approaches, with a focus on inclusivity and collaboration in public arts engagement. It has resulted in interconnected bodies of research and curation, that bring together diverse voices, modes of expression, and interfaces for dialogue. The focus areas of her research extend to projects with arts education, printmaking history and practice, the documentation of living traditions and folk arts in India, and environmental consciousness in the arts. She sees herself as a mediator and culture worker, connecting dots, ideas and people. In 2020, she registered a consultancy- LVAC- as a means to engage formally with a broader sphere of organisations and collaborators.
Her ongoing engagements include ‘Goa Familia’, archival photography project with Serendipity Arts Foundation and ‘Sunaparanta Art Initiator Lab’, Goa (S.A.I.L) mentoring project. She led the development of ‘Sandooka – The Living Museum of Kodava Culture,’ a virtual project commissioned by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) with whom she concluded an Archival Museum Fellowship for Goa Chitra Museum (2018-19). She is Associate Curator with ARTPORT_making waves – global arts program for climate-action. She is associated as Visiting Faculty at the School of Design and Innovation, RV University, Bangalore and Visiting Professor at the Trans-Disciplinary University (TDU) Bangalore. She has curated numerous exhibitions with galleries across India and contributes to publications on art history and contemporary cultural practices. Lina has a BFA in printmaking from Bangalore University and MFA in Art History from the same institution.
Rashmimala (India) is an artist based in Varodara, who engages with the interface of ecology and art – drawing from a variety of sources such as museum collections, archival documents, academic scholarship, field data and the genre of botanical art. She has exhibited widely, participating in both group and solo shows, one of which focused on representing minor local plants along the genre of botanical illustrations, natural history documentations and historical anecdotes. She holds a Bachelor’s and Master's degree in Painting, in addition to a Masters in Art Criticism.