Delhi, Experience Artistic Experimentation At The Serendipity Open Studio Showcase

The Serendipity Arts Residency has established itself as a pivotal platform for experimental art in South Asia since its inception in 2017. Every year, the New Delhi-based Serendipity Arts Foundation brings together a select group of early-career practitioners from across India, providing them with time, space, and mentorship to explore new directions in their respective practices. The program emphasizes experimentation over perfection and collaboration over isolation.

This August, the Serendipity Arts Foundation will once again open its doors to the public for the 2025 edition of its Open Studio showcase, marking the culmination of its annual three-month residency. From August 2 to 8, SAF’s Defence Colony space in New Delhi will host a week-long showcase of new and emerging work by six rising artists and cultural practitioners from India and France. The Open Studio, which takes place before the landmark 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa this December, provides a rare glimpse into process-driven, interdisciplinary practice — and the conversations, risks, and collaborations that shape it.

At the heart of this year’s curatorial thread is the idea of “chance”. Harshada Vijay, the 2025 Programmer-in-Residence, observed early into the residency that all six residents were engaging, whether consciously or intuitively, with the unknown: letting materials dictate form, inviting others into their processes, and opening up their work to the unpredictable.

The 2025 cohort includes Indian artists Anishaa Tavag, Anshumaan Sathe, Malavika Bhatia, Ningkhan Keishing, Programmer-in-Residence Harshada Vijay, and French artist Valia Russo.

In ‘Hi Bi Kadlekai’, Bangalore-based artist Anishaa Tavag presents a performance installation exploring fluid identity and masculinity. Inspired by gestures of Bollywood heroes and her own childhood memories, the work moves between embodiment, vulnerability, and play.

Anshumaan Sathe’s project ‘Come Play With Me’ features collaborative portraits created with fellow transgender individuals. These drawings are part workshop, part love letter — focusing on queer joy, desire, and the right to self-representation.

Malavika Bhatia, working under the nom de plume MycoDyke, has cultivated living fungal sculptures in collaboration with Schizophyllum commune, a resilient species of fungus which resembles undulating waves of tightly packed corals or a loose Chinese fan. Her project, ‘Archive of Impossible Exologies’, binds together Punjabi riddles, colonial botany, and live mycelium into decomposing, responsive installations. At the centre of this collaborative body of work is a fungal book that grows and decays.

Ningkhan Keishing, a ceramicist from Manipur, presents ‘Phunga Wari (Lusivi)’ — a sculptural tribute to the traditional Tangkhul Naga wood stove. Representing mother, father, and spirit, the furnace becomes a vessel for family memory and indigenous knowledge.

French artist Valia Russo, participating in an exchange programme through the Villa Swagatam residency, will presents ‘Pédiluve’, a multi-part installation crafted from digital images, waste materials, and botanical elements. Referencing the ritual of purification before entering sacred spaces, Russo’s work explores the psychic overflow of the digital era.

What unites these works is not a single medium or theme but a shared willingness to embrace uncertainty and stay open to transformation. “The Residency programme has always been a space for discovery — both for the artists and for us. What excites me most about this edition is how seamlessly collaboration, vulnerability, and experimentation have come together,” Smriti Rajgarhia, the Director of the Serendipity Arts Foundation, says. “The works you’ll encounter are not just reflections of individual journeys, but of a shared ecosystem of care and risk-taking. This is what the Foundation hopes to nurture: artistic practices that are brave, generous, and deeply rooted in context.”

After the Open Studio in Delhi, the works will move to Panjim, Goa, for the landmark 10th Serendipity Arts Festival from December 12–21, 2025, and will be part of a larger program of visual art, performance, culinary practices, and accessibility initiatives.

Follow Serendipity Arts Foundation to learn more about the programme, and RSVP to attend the Serendipity Arts Residency Open Studio 2025 here.

If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:

From Empire To Intimacy: Radhika Surana’s Textile Art Explores The Politics Of Indigo

A Portal To Something New: Shyama Talks Rebirth, Mythology, & Painting Dream Logic

Architecture Meets Emotion Through The Structural Poetics Of Asad Hossen’s Art