Peers is an annual art residency programme run by Khoj. The 2026 edition of Khoj Peers has been supported by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation. Since its inception in 2003, the Peers Residency provides space for experimentation and exploration outside academic confines allowing emerging practitioners to interact with the larger creative community as well as attempt to create a network of diverse artists across mediums and disciplines.

Over the years the residency model has been constantly refined and updated to be more relevant to the times. The program is populated with artists’ visits and interactions, studio visits, workshops, and curated exhibition walkthroughs for the residents to have a gamut of art-related experiences and exposure, planned according to the interests of the cohort to help them push their practice.

This year's Peers calendar was organised with diverse lens-based and material practices as well as analogue printmaking, drawing, painting, writing, and sound-based work. The schedule also brought together discussions on eco-art, ethics, accessibility, and narrative-building techniques for storytelling.

The residency kicked off with a peer-to-peer sharing session where the cohort dialogued with each other and shared about their practices through presentations and conversations. The next day, a neighborhood walk through Khirkee was organized by Gauri Pathak, Khoj’s Senior Curator and Communications Manager, to help the cohort familiarize themselves with the area's history, contemporary reality, and connection to Khoj. Later in the week, the cohort participated in an outdoor foray / Walk-shop at Sanjay Van, guided by “M” Mycodyke, a queer, non-binary urban forager, community-taught field mycologist, and 2024 Peers Share participant. This excursion integrated queer ecology theory with an investigation into themes of decay, regeneration, and more-than-human kinship, viewed through the lens of termites and mushrooms. The week ended with a studio visit with multidisciplinary artist and composer Kaldi Moss.

The second week of the residency began with an old Delhi walk through the lanes of Chawri Bazar, Khari Baoli, Chemical Market, Nayi Sadak, Bhagirath Place lights and medical market and Camera Market, to cover the array of material practices of the cohort, and familiarize them with shops for sourcing equipment and supplies during the residency. Hosted by Shuddhabrata Sengupta at Raqs Media Collective's studio–the Peers cohort participated in a writing workshop and studio visit that explored language and translation as mediators of power and meaning. On the following day, the Peers visited the studio of Mithu Sen, an eminent artist and one of the jury members for Peers 2026. During these discussions, the Peers shared their ongoing artistic concerns and Mithu shed light on the responsibilities of an artist, focusing on undertaking deeper research, building a community, and experimenting with new forms.

The week’s programming continued with a guided walkthrough of the exhibition TYEB MEHTA Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being) at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Cohort members were introduced to Mehta’s practice, methodology, and creative influences, alongside the museum’s curatorial strategy, by team member Manan. Dhiraj Rabha, an artist and alumnus from the Peers 2024, visited the cohort for a screening and discussion of his film, Whispers Beneath the Ashes (2026). Following the screening, the residents participated in a critique-style session to offer feedback on the film, which remains a work-in-progress.

The third week of the residency culminated with a visual conversation with Studio Harkat, a multidisciplinary and independent film production house based in Mumbai and Berlin. The Khoj team organised this conversation after a discussion with the cohort as they wanted to speak with the creative lab to learn more about narrative building and deepen their understanding of lens- based practices.

Week Four began with a joint walkthrough of the exhibition Now /Next: Art India 30 Under 30 at Vadehra Gallery, alongside artists from the Serendipity Arts Residency. Within the week, a day-long, intensive darkroom printing workshop was also organized at the studio of artist Srinivas Kuruganti. A session led by Anna Serilieu Charenamei, researcher and curatorial fellow of the CISA 2025-26 program, focused on the ethics of art practice and community collaboration.

To support critic-in-residence, Elizabeth Lalruatdiki, Khoj also set up a writing workshop facilitated by Nancy Adajania, which was attended by the rest of the cohort as well. Adajania introduced various exercises designed to ground writing as an embodied practice. During the residency's concluding week, the cohort focused heavily on final production, engaging in internal dialogues, collaborative efforts, and finalizing decisions regarding their displays and production logistics.

The Peers Cohort and Their Practices

The artists this year chose to work with themes of memory, the body and the machine, urbanism, and social commentaries using found and uncommon materials, and mediums. For the open studio days, they pushed themselves to make their studios a space of dialogue while also presenting the shifts in their practices.

Aṇu

Aṇu's artistic practice integrates generative sound–developed through Pure Data–along with cartography, film, and critical theory to examine queer and trans-feminist narratives. This includes investigations into urban sound ecologies and trans-feminist discourse, with a specific focus on Tamil. Her work is dedicated to the creation of accessible archives that prioritize themes of care, affection, and the lived experiences of queer and trans communities.

Throughout the Peers residency, Aṇu engaged in a deep introspection regarding her identity and assertion as an artist against a sound-practitioner. Her creative practice was grounded in extensive research and readings centered on Keezhadi, an archaeological site located in Tamil Nadu. The excavations at Keezhadi were halted and this eventually resulted in sanitization of historical factsaimed at defining a “true history,” as the site yielded evidence pointing toward a non-Sanskrit, native genealogy.

In her project மாற ாலியின் ஒலிக்கருவிகள் maaroliyin olikkaruvigal, Aṇu continued to examine the ‘instruments’ used to measure and construct dominant narratives of history and the subsequent processes of generating evidence, acquiring power, and controlling access to it. She attempted to tackle complex histories surrounding migration and Sanskritization of the sub-continent, highlighting the absence of non-heteronormative, queer and oral testimonies in contemporary society.

Through the adjustment of items such as cassette players, digital cameras, and electric guitars, anu produced alternative instruments for documentation and evaluation, yielding proof that captures the “messy” and “ephemeral” aspects of queer, marginalized communities. This capacity to modify such devices subsequently facilitated a collaborative workshop setup and exploration of performance.

Arieno Kera

Arieno Kera’s practice centers complex, indigenous identity and cultural memory, often explored through the lens of Naga legends and folklore, mark-making and memory. Through a diverse material practice including painting, drawing, installation and video, she has attempted to decolonize knowledge and create a space for re-situating folklore within contemporary settings without.

During the residency, Kera explored and deconstructed different mediums for artistic expression including PowerPoint presentation, video-editing, book making, poetry and weaving. Through back-strap weaving technique—a portable, body-tension tradition central to Naga culture—Kera engaged in questions of situatedness of knowledge, particularly those that are traditionally passed down from generation to the next. Asking questions like what it might mean to weave away from home, the process became an inquiry into how much the body remembers, rather than what memory alone can recall. This inquiry extends across projects ‘Uramia Die’ and ‘Eat-a-ban’, which delve into text, language, translation, and the power structures governing storytelling and who gets to hold and share them.

The third project, Nie Pie Penuo’ reconceived the book as a textile object, seamlessly blending subject, surface, and materiality. The projects together reframed traditional material practices such as weaving, into conceptual frameworks rather than mere textile techniques. Throughout Peers, Kera explored methods of navigating memory, language, translation and material culture where each gesture weaves together a place, experience and meaning.

In their collaborative project titled றென்யிடியே [tenyidie] Kera and Aṇu utilized transcribing as a tool for speculation. Drawing on the history of Tenyidie as an oral tongue that adopted the Roman alphabet under colonial rule, they investigated the question, "What if Tenyidie was written in Tamil script instead of Roman?" This project became an imaginative exercise formapping linguistic transition, indigeneity and cross-cultural exchange, resulting in an interdependent recitation of a Naga folklore poem where both artists were co-creators of meaning.

Mahima Varma

Mahima Varma’s practice focuses on the symbiotic relationship within natural eco-systems. Influenced by the idea of “superorganisms,” she explores ecological rhythms, memory and fragility of life in specific environments. Her practice spans site-specific and immersive installations using biomaterials like mycelium, plants, discarded wood etc., foregrounding themes like extraction, borders, care and natural balance.

Throughout the residency, Varma engaged in deep material exploration, transforming her studio into a laboratory for experimentation and attuned listening to the natural world. Collaborating with organic materials such as mycelium and Prosopis Juli flora (vilayti kikar), found around Khoj’s premises, she attempted to address the decolonization of Lutyens' Delhi through map-making, route mapping, and structure building. However, due to Delhi’s challenging environmental factors, marked by extreme heat and high pollution, these attempts ultimately proved difficult to sustain under the city's harsh climatic conditions. Her project negotiations developed into a process of continuous experimentation, failure, and adaptation. Rather than forcing the organism toward a predefined outcome, the work focused on understanding both human and non-human agency, allowing art to emerge through mutual collaboration instead of direct control. Ultimately, what began as an effort to govern the material transformed into an exercise in surrendering command.

Namya Chadha

Working across film and photography, Namya Chadha focuses on storytelling to speak about hidden disabilities, self-discovery and quiet resilience. Some of her previous projects include self-documentation to understand and negotiate with the life of a filmmaker, her own hearing impairment and disability rights, to discover alternate communication methods and non-traditional storytelling.

Chadha actively tried to push past the conventional boundaries of her background in filmmaking and photography during Peers, choosing to step outside her comfort zone and engage with new artistic forms. These explorations ranged from technical processes like projection mapping to more tactile practice like analogue photo printing, poetry writing and book making.

Over the course of the residency, Chadha framed accessibility as a creative approach, exploring text, translation, and sonic portraiture to investigate what a truly sensorial portrait of herself could look like. In her project, Can I sit here with my feelings here? Chadha invited the audience to “slowness”, welcoming them into her world of translations. Using Soniox—an app linked to her hearing aid that provides real-time conversation transcription–Chadha used the Open Studio Day as an opportunity to welcome the audience into her world.

With dialogue being central to Peers, she investigated diverse methods of listening, engaging with everything from the gibberish sounds in her headset to clear words. This inquiry further addressed accessible design, implementation of captioning, and the ethics of audience consent when transcription serves as an essential tool for facilitating dialogue rather than a form of extraction.

For Chadha, her photographic expertise came to the forefront during a collaboration with fellow resident-artist Kera. Their joint project, titled Beer Binoculars, sought to disrupt the conventional, singular perspective of perceiving images.

Sahil Kumar

Sahil Kumar’s practice explores the intersection between mental health, collective healing and human resilience. Drawing from his personal experience in hospital environments, his artistic practice transforms medical objects and sites as a space of vulnerability, endurance and self- transformation. He works with materials like charcoal, painting and discarded medical equipment, to create installations, objects and durational performance.

Throughout the residency, Sahil reflected on the deeply political and often invisible dynamics surrounding care. He examined this through the lens of support–domestic and infrastructural. He initially began the residency tinkering with clinical equipment like a stethoscope to question if care could function as an extension of support.

He further inquired whether human conversation could sustain individuals in ways that resemble prosthesis or medicine? These inquiries gradually shifted his approach from medical objects toward relationships, from the visibility of medical apparatus to the often-invisible structures through which care operates. This resulted in an interactive installation that actively sought support from its viewers. Infrastructure blueprints, medical aids like wheelchairs, support pets, and XRAYS of medicine tablets with hidden words of care guided the concept from care to active healing.

Within his project, (_ _ _ _ _ _) the audience collectively transformed into facilitators of care and eventually healing. As titling an art object marks the culmination of an artwork's journey, Kumar invited the audience to name the XRAYS. This exercise generated an archive of collective perceptions of care, support, vulnerability, and relationships which Kumar hopes to carry forward within his practice.

Elizabeth Lalruatdiki

Elizabeth Lalruatdiki 's writing is rooted in decolonial aesthetics, anthropology, cultural criticism, and the intersection of beauty and function. Her earlier writing, What is ‘Art Object? laments over the "art object" by challenging traditional Western hierarchies and offering a decolonial perspective through the example of the Mizo puan which is beautiful precisely because it is useful (tangkaina), where pattern/image is not a superficial or aesthetic but the image itself is the object. She argues that separating art from function is a mark of privilege.

Throughout the residency, Lalruatdiki expressed herself in both critical and creative dimensions, rooting her inquiry within the central question, “what do we talk about when we talk about art?” This provided an opportunity to bring artistic practice into dialogue with a broader public, engaging individuals from all walks of life who have no formal association with the art world or its jargon. As the residency progressed, Lalruatdiki’s conversations with the artists-in-residence sparked a keen interest in how these artists articulate their own practices, the specific identities they claim or refuse to claim, and the forces behind their work.

In the true collaborative spirit of Peers 2026, her second dispatch was developed collectively. As the theme of translation encompassing spoken language, verbal and non-verbal cues, expressions of care, and the dynamics of power and politics guided the artists, the cohort gathered on a Google Doc to articulate an expanded definition of the concept.

For a critic, the residency offers a profound space to think through ideas not only using text but also via expanded media. Consequently, Lalruatdiki’s second dispatch for the Open Studio materialized as a film capturing these organic cross-disciplinary collaborations and lived moments within the residency. It also reflected a key transition in her artistic journey, as her creative process moved from writing, editing and proof reading to the sequencing of video, actively experimenting with narratives and linearity.

(Cover photo: From L to R - Mahima Verma, Arieno Kera, Namya Chadha, anu, Sahil Kumar, and Elizabeth Lalruatdiki)