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Fileona Dkhar

tekenen, fotografie, film, Experimenteel, Ecologie, Documentair, Digitaal, Conceptueel, Artistiek onderzoek, Archieven

Fileona Endoxa Dkhar (1993) is an artist-researcher working across film, photography, writing and performance. Her work is informed by themes of history, nature, mythology and indigenous storytelling. She approaches art-making as a portal-making, like writing poetry to access the past and the future.

Of Roots and Portals
Of Roots and Portals - link: https://www.fileonadkhar.com/rootsandportals With-nessing encapsulates my acknowledgment of a connection with ancestral beings. This project finds its genesis in a web residency at Schloss Solitude, curated by Liquid Architecture. Commencing this residency, my contemplation on the art of letter writing serves as a deliberate exploration of realities that are tangible yet elusive – the intricate nuances of existence, creation, and communication. I enter this with-nessing through a series of letters addressed to a descendant. The descendant is a fictional entity in the present but a potential reality in the future. Each letter is an offering that functions as a gaze talking to the future in the present. The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of a Khasi creation myth, narrating the ancestral descent to Earth as its custodians. Yet, it also encapsulates a sense of displacement. We, in essence, remain perpetually estranged. Or at least I feel this way right now. The letter is also an offering of persistence, a continuous exploration of our presence, our articulation, and the offerings we extend to one another in this earthly odyssey. I think of the letters as roots, as portals, regarding them as vessels of heritage, as thresholds, and as mnemonic devices preserving the legacy of those who precede us. This draws heavily from Khasi rootbridges, bridges that are made from living roots whose tending is passed on through generations. A bridge into the future is build through what is offered in the present.
Ancestral Echoes
Ancestral Echoes - The film “Ancestral Echoes” taps into a sound possessed by the guiding spirits of the Khasi Hills’ in Meghalaya. This voice, belonging to ancestral spirits, speaks the Khasi language, recounting tales of their native hills. Amidst a landscape marked by a lengthy history of mining—remnants of colonised extraction and ambition—we hear a disembodied voice grappling with a tumultuous past and uncertain future. This echo, resonating from caves and abandoned tunnels, wanders throughout the forest.
non-native Lament: Vilayati Kikar
non-native Lament: Vilayati Kikar - Cyanotype and Drawing installation with text video projection “NonNative Lament” is an installation that is both elegy and introspection. It mourns the narratives woven around Prosopis juliflora, known locally in Delhi as Vilayati Kikar or Mesquite in its native South America, and labelled India’s Most Hated Tree*. Rooted in 19th-century British colonial history, this tree was introduced to the Indian subcontinent for its soil-stabilising properties. Today, the Delhi Government’s Kikar Hatao Campaign seeks to eradicate it as a perceived threat to native flora. Yet, in defiance of eradication efforts across the country, the tree perseveres, asserting its presence as a thorny intruder. However, its story is multifaceted, extending beyond hatred. Dkhar encountered the Kikar on the edges of Khirki Village and Khirki Extension, intrigued by its contentious status as an invasive species. Through “NonNative Lament,” Dkhar questions and reimagines our understanding of native and non-native, provoking a deeper reflection on the complex dynamics that shape our environment and collective history.
Secular Prayer to a Canary in A Coalmine
Secular Prayer to a Canary in A Coalmine - Performance with ceramics and cyanotypes (Presented at instrument inventors, Den Haag) A spoken word performance around an altar of cyanotype prints and ceramic sound instruments. Each ceramic sculpture is like an echo of a stalagmite, cave formations. A mic is attached which plays subtle sounds from caves: manmade (the noise of extraction), canaries, fire crackle (ancient cave animation) and echoes. The audio transforms the space into a cave where divination begins. Aristotle believed the earth’s organs were represented in the caves underneath acting as a stomach. The Mawmluh Caves, in Fileona’s home state, are a site of exploration, history and also limestone mining.
“What will we do with all this bloody barbed wire?”
“What will we do with all this bloody barbed wire?” - Text and prints on garments, part of "How To Not Build a Nation" by the Forest Curriculum for Art Jameel Dubai. The work consists of a printed statement and a sweatshirt designed by Fileona Dkhar, which together offer an act of refusal of the premise of proposal for a monument to Partition. The text unpacks the direct lineage between the history of the partition of the Indian subcontinent, its enduring trauma, and the continued militarization of the country, by both the Indian Army and Hindu paramilitary groups. Instead, it proposes that the only possible proposal for such a monument would be complete demilitarization of the subcontinent. The sweatshirt provides a poetic gesture towards this imagination: barbed wire, so common in the occupied parts of Northeast India becomes drops of water. It uses the black and green common to military camouflage to create a pattern that visualization of borders melting away.
A Forest (performance, a collective collaboration)
A Forest (performance, a collective collaboration) - Collective drawing performance followed by a discussion led by the two artists, then a collective drawing workshop with participants hosted at OtherWise Wageningen (WUL). The performance was a reflection upon the external and internal forces that guided and affect our identities and bodies. The workshop uses the metaphor of a forest as a site of knowledge exchange and community building.
I pointed the lens at myself, I focused it nearby
I pointed the lens at myself, I focused it nearby - Website includes multi-media projects undertaken during my master’s study at the Piet Zwart Institute. It accompanies my written thesis as a discussion around my lens-based art practice. Throughout my work, the lens acts and is considered as a metaphor for looking and being looked at. Focusing on my identity, my analysis extends into artist Trinh T. Minh-ha’s philosophy of using the lens to “speak not about identity but to speak nearby.” I speak near my identity with the lens. I articulate my identity as linked to notions of image, place, feeling and personal history. website: https://www.fileonadkhar.com/focusnearby

The Ground Up & The Washed Down

Datum:
Locatie: A Tale of A Tub
https://metropolism.com/nl/recensie/50250_een_herstelplek_voor_verroeste_lichamen_the_ground_up_and_the_washed_down_bij_a_tale_of_a_tub/

Breakfast B Reading Series

Datum:
Locatie: M4 Gastatelier

Algorithmic Poetry

Datum:
Locatie: Online
In samenwerking met: Liquid Architecture, Akademie Schloss Solitude
https://www.akademie-solitude.de/de/project/web-residencies/calls-2023/algorithmic-poetry/

Extractions

Datum:
Locatie: 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Kalponik Rekha

Datum:
Locatie: Instument Inventors
https://instrumentinventors.org/agenda/%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B2%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95-%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%96%E0%A6%BE-kalponik-rekha-imaginary-terrains/?lang=nl

In a World of Opaque Complexities

Datum:
Locatie: MAMA Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: Cave Collective

Group exhibition

Proposals for a monument to Partition

Datum:
Locatie: Art Jameel Dubai
In samenwerking met: Forest Curriculum
https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/proposals-for-a-memorial-to-partition/

Refracted Reality

Datum:
Locatie: v2 Lab for Unstable Media

Exhibition of collection of works created between 2020 and 2021 by graduate artists from the Lens-Based Media program of the Piet Zwart institute.

https://v2.nl/events/refracted-reality-pzi-graduation-show

NEstudio’s Raamwerk

Datum:
Locatie: NE Studios

An exhibition on the windows of the studio building on the Noordereiland.

https://www.nestudios.nl/raamwerk/

Queer Diaspora Cineclub

Datum:
Locatie: Netherlands
In samenwerking met: Nieuwe Vide Haarlem

Engaged in discussions around participatory education and artists' cinema, focused on the theme of “queer diasporas.” Developing installation around theme of indigenous queer identity and the impossible image

https://nieuwevide.com/expositie/queer-diasporas/

Function(chaos)// a planet is not a sphere by Fileona Dkhar

Datum:
Locatie: Eye Filmmuseum
In samenwerking met: EYE Research Labs

EYE ON ART’S RESEARCH LABS PROVIDE SCOPE FOR A NEW GENERATION OF CURATORS AND ARTISTS TO HONE THEIR SKILLS. STUDENTS FROM DIFFERENT ART ACADEMIES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE ASKED TO PUT TOGETHER A PROGRAMME FEATURING THEIR OWN WORK AND FILMS (INCLUDING REMIXES) FROM EYE’S COLLECTION.

https://ecinemaacademy.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/29-february-research-labs-2020/
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