Khirkee Voice/ खिड़की आवाज़
Co-Founder & Co-editor
Khirkee Voice/ खिड़की आवाज़ launched in 2016 is a bilingual, hyper-local tabloid ‘newspaper’, conceived in response to the Coriolis Effect: Migrations and Memory residency at Khoj International Artists'Association.
The ‘newspaper’ examined the historical and contemporary links between India and the African continent through art, fiction, photography and interviews. Using the familiar form and language of daily newspapers, Khirkee Voice aimed to subvert the usual negativity of news surrounding the African Diaspora, and present an alternative, more nuanced point of view. We were also keen to develop an unintimidating form and medium in which ‘Art’ was no longer bound within the relatively inaccessible white cube, while also making it more relevant, and meaningful, to a wider audience.
Khirkee Voice/ Khirkee Awaaz has since been supported by Khoj as a bilingual quarterly publication that is circulated among a diverse cross-section of the neighbourhood, and the larger city.
It continues to work with a wide range of creative expressions to disseminate complex ideas,
critical information and social realities of urban living in thought-provoking ways. In 2017, we developed a collaborative series of interventions called ‘Khirkee Talk Show’, a shop front pop-up for a TV talk-show style public interaction between our friends from the African Diaspora and members of the community; encouraging open dialogue between people who would otherwise have no opportunity to meet- paving the way for some honest and heartfelt conversations. In 2018 we started a series of workshops which aimed to skill interested members from within the community and beyond in the diverse tools of expression that go into making a publication like Khirkee Voice. The workshops are designed with the ultimate aim of creating a group of dedicated individuals from within the community who could, in future, take the project forward in a direction suitable for their communities’ needs.
