Artist of the Month | Aniruddha Kar and Musfira Shaffi

For the second edition of our Artist of the Month is a special one. It comes in the aftermath of the conference "Dear White People: Lets Break the Silence". As a part of the conference, Aniruddha and Musfira's work was put up for a week long exhibition at Kulturagreggat (Hildastrasse). The exhibition titled "Anuranana" or "resonance" as it translates in English, first and foremost challenged the expectation of the audience, it was important for the artists and that the aritsts dont exploit their explotation to get the attention of the viewer, instead they can speak about whatever they wish to. And this is exactly what these two did.

Musfira Shaffi is an artist and writer exploring the construction of identity through an ever-shifting visual language of urban elements, ephemera, and memory. Her screenplay "Badal" debuted at Cannes International Film Festival 2014. She is the winner of the Montegrappa Award at Emirates Literature Festival 2017, longlisted for the Zeenat Haroon Rasheed Prize 2019 and 2020, and shortlisted for the Financial Times/Bodley Head Prize 2019 and Barjeel Poetry Prize 2020. She was selected for the Cannes Lions See It Be It initiative for female leaders in the creative industry.

Musfira's series, popping with strong colors is a dream like hommage to South Asian pop culture. Her Pakistani-Indian roots and her time in London and Switzerland comes through in her work, her series a mix of collages dealt with memory, identity, femininity and diaspora.

Very calm and very humble Aniruddha Kar presently living in Heidelberg, is working on his Ph.D. project jointly with the University of Luxembourg and Heidelberg University. He earned his artistic training from Bangladesh. Kar obtained a Master's degree in drawing and painting from the University of Dhaka. Later on, he studied art history and anthropology at Heidelberg University.

Putting words with images and let them interact with each other is pretty playful to Aniruddha Kar. In this series of drawings, titled as PICTURE, he consciously added some words with simple drawings to add irony, satire, sarcasm, misunderstanding, or just nothing. This series he started last year; hope will continue it for few more years.

Explore more about the artists works by visiting their social media
@musfira and @ani_ruddha_kar on instagram and watch them get into conversation with Dara Shikoh on the link below.