Participants

Vicky Shahjahan is a Queer activist and an local artist coming from Colombo’s Slave Island neighborhood. Vicky’s work is mostly focused on feminism, freedom, gender-rights and marginalised communities. Vicky is quite known for henna artwork, using henna to express challenging and diverse stories of women and LGBTQ community. She is engaged in the performance art scene as an interpretive dancer. She has been a collaborator with The Many Headed Hydra collective for the 2019 edition of Colomboscope and the exhibition Is It Possible To Live Outside of Language? curated by Aziz Sohail at Indus Valley Gallery in Karachi.

Chathuri Nissansala (b. 1993) acquired a Bachelor in Fine Arts (painting) from Chitra Kala Parishath, Bengaluru (2017) and a Master in visual Arts (painting) from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara Gujarat, India (2019). She is a multidisciplinary artist working with performance art, painting, sculpture and print. Her works raise poignant questions about notions of gender, class and nationalism in Sri Lanka.

Sabeen Omar is an artist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is deeply inspired by textiles and it is a motif that recurs often in her work. Her current body of work is a series of drawings, scrapings and cuttings on found boxes and wrappers. 

Vasi is a transgender woman/non-binary femme-presenting person with a love of poetry, performance, working in many intermingled styles and artistic traditions, from surreal and contemporary storytelling to natural history and paleontography. She is currently after a BA in humanities and English from the university of Peradeniya, and works as a freelance illustrator and artist. 

Veenadari Lakshika Jayakody is an Ensemble-Based Physical Theater Devising Artist, Actor-Creato, Educator, Dancer, Choreographer, Mask player and a Clown who has been worked in theatre and film since 2009 as well as created her original work. She has worked in her productions in Sri Lanka, the United States and India.

Hema Shironi, Visual Artist, Born in 1991, Completed BFA from Ramanathan fine arts academy, Jaffna and MA in Art and Design from Beacon House National University in Pakistan. 

"My practice involves intricate embroideries that engage with the formation, preparation, and experience of identity."

The House of kal in Colombo along with its counterpart in Karachi and Berlin brings together art practitioners whose work explores feminist, anti-fascist, anti-racist and queer possibility. The House of kal Colombo brings together a group of artists to realize a self-organized space within which studio practices, studio visits, workshops, long-term collaborations, and an open house form an experimental low-residency program from May to September 2021. 

Ayesha (she/her) works with video, textile, painting and installation to explore moments of care and community in everyday life. Through an experimental and ever-changing practice, she focuses on representing the possibility of intimacy within resistance. She is expected to receive her BFA from Goldsmiths in 2023.

Tehreem Mela (she/her) explores her own relationship with Sargodha’s feudal and colonial history through an engagement with video, paint and photography. She is particularly interested in the central position of the white voices in depicting the colony and juxtaposes it with local, personal and familial narratives from her village, expanding into broader South Asia. In 2021, Mela documented graveyards and shrines in Karachi, exploring the multiplicity of grief and time through collage.

Sophia-Layla Afsar (she/her) is a lawyer turned therapist and artist. Her art blends trans and neurodivergent activism, emotional care, and play. She uses playful props and opacity to create interactive situations that explore trans and neurodivergent perspectives. By simultaneously withholding information and providing care for more privileged visitors, her situations highlight how expectations of disclosure and emotional labour are means of exploitation of marginalized folks.

Originally from Tando Muhammad Khan, Sehan Khanna (they/them) are currently based in Karachi for their BFA in Architecture (Class of 2025) at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. A writer and performance artist, they have extensively written about their experience of being a queer person in Sindh. Through their performances, they explore possibilities of acceptance and healing in relationship to personal trauma with a focus on bringing community together to create shared empathy.

Ayesha Alizeh (she/her) is a writer, architect and artist and is interested in questions related to space, politics, gender. Alizeh was shortlisted for the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize 2020 for her non-fiction essay ‘Bad House.’ She graduated with a BA in Architecture from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2019.

In the late summer months of 2021 the House of kal in Karachi presents a diverse program in the frame of its one-week Open House. In addition to an exhibition of works by House of kal Karachi participants, visitors can expect intersting gatherings, conversations and performances. 

Venuri Perera is a choreographer, performance artist and curator from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her works have dealt with violent nationalism, patriarchy, border rituals, colonial heritage, and class. Her solos and collaborative creations have been shown in Europe, South and East Asia. Since 2017, she has been exploring the power dynamics of gaze, sensuality and anonymity. Currently, she is searching for ways to create conditions for radical love and compassion in her work and life. Although mostly failing, she remains optimistic. She is currently based in Amsterdam and a participant at DAS Theatre.

Arshia Fatima Haq (born in Hyderabad, India) works through film, visual art, performance, and sound, in feminist modes outside of the Western model. She is interested in counterachives and speculative narratives, and is currently exploring themes of embodiment, mysticism, indigenous and localized knowledge within the context of Sufism. She is the founder of Discostan, a collaborative decolonial project and record label working with cultural production from South and West Asia and North Africa. She hosts and produces monthly radio shows on Dublab and NTS. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, nightclubs, and in the streets.

Promona Sengupta is an academic, an activist and a curator based in Berlin. She co-founded Mo’Halla along with Jyothidas KV and Prabhas Tripathy, a pop-up space for progressive art, culture and politics. During her 9-month studio and research grant in the frame of kal she draws inspiration from worldbuilding, science fiction and anticolonial activism to engage in exercises in liberatory speculation. With Speaking Barnacular: Watery Sanctuaries she proposes to look at swimming, flotation and altered states of human consciousness under water as socio-politically rooted practices of dissident history and material culture.

After 18 months of planning and overcoming all kinds of challenges, the House of kal in Berlin facilitated a multifaceted program consisting of an exhibition, gatherings, conversations, performances, and workshops that connected practitioners in Berlin and across Colombo, Karachi and spaces in South Asia both digitally and in person.