ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Steevez is a visual artist and curator based in Chennai. He holds a B.Sc. in Visual Communication from Loyola College, Chennai, and has completed advanced photography studies from Speos Institute, Paris, and Pathshala Media Institute, Dhaka. His artistic practice focuses on personal, social, and environmental narratives. Steevez has curated exhibitions such as the World Refugee Day Exhibition and Nitham '22 and '23.

Tanvi Mishra works with images as a photo editor, curator, writer and educator. Among her interests are rights and representation in image-making, research strategies in visual culture as well as the notion of truth/fiction in photography, particularly in the current political landscape. She has curated multiple exhibitions including at Delhi Photo Festival, Photo Kathmandu and Breda Photo biennial and most recently her show Moving Definitions: an invitation to re-view at Recontres d'Arles.

Ritesh

I’m a photographer based in Mumbai and some months in the UK. After dumping a high paying job in Dubai, I dived head first into an unpaid internship and subsequent (paid) trainee job at the Indian Express. Followed by 3 years at Hindustan Times and seven (whoa!) at Open Magazine. Since 2015, I lead an equally peaceful and turbulent life as a freelancer. In 2018 I chose to complicate my life even more by self publishing my first book The Red Cat and Other Stories. In 2024, I self published my second book Where Are You, a bittersweet look at my six months in Manchester, UK where I was living with my long term partner. At the time of writing this, I am standing at the press floor, pulling teeth and sipping tea, while prepping to produce my third book/zine/booklet Snoops On A Train, a humourous take on privacy in public spaces.

Percy Kaki is a visual artist based out of Hyderabad, India. She is inspired by the idea of memory and how it works in the personal, social and political. She was an art facilitator at Yakshi Constitutional values in a praxis program working with marginalized women using art to understand the Constitution. Her works have been exhibited in numerous venues including the Kaghazi Pairahan: publishing & Resistance in South Asia at Arles photo festival; Vanam art festival 2023 in Chennai and Fault lines –visual symptoms of discordance in Indian history at Conflictorium, Ahmedabad.

This is a Protest, 2021, Mixed Media Photobook, 16 x 21.0 cm

This book traces the after-life of the Tsunduru Massacre of 1991, the absences, the lingering hauntings, the erasure and dissonances that percolate through the everyday for the kin of the survivors of this heinous caste-based killing. Intertwining her personal history with archival research, the book facilitates the viewer to understand the beginning, the moment of the incident, and the aftermath in continuum keeping in mind that there is no linear progression to how these events occur. The book concludes with an ode to food and the everyday, featuring recipes (and tales of culinary discrimination) from the artist’s mother.

Kumar Shaw is a traveller and art educator. He began with a bicycle trip across 27 states, conducting theatre, art, and storytelling workshops in schools along the way. Subsequently, he led the collection of 1,000+ children's stories as zines from students across Tamil Nadu. This collection was later published by the TN State Education Department. He is currently working on expanding this project to other Indian states.

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