This weekend, theatre maker and storyteller Sheena Khalid is bringing a storytelling workshop, Voicing the Silent Spaces, to Art and Charlie, an art gallery in Bandra. The workshop is part of the gallery’s ongoing exhibition titled She Carries the Quiet, which confronts the slow erosion of one’s identity. Through her session, Khalid will encourage participants to explore the art of storytelling by taking inspiration from the paintings of artists Kajal Chaudhary, Nandhini Sree, and Khushbu Baria.
An untitled artwork by Khushbu Baria
Khalid studied theatre at the London International School of Performing Arts, which follows French actor and coach Jacques Lecoq’s pedagogy. “In this, you spend a lot of time looking at architecture, colours, nature, painting, photographs, and how they inform, inspire, and enrich your practice. Therefore, the idea of looking at other objects [the external world and media] has been a part of my theatre upbringing,” she tells us. A few months ago, Khalid, along with theatre practitioner Puja Sarup, conducted a workshop with a photobook library at Shivaji Park, responding to the stories and movement caught in photobooks. The response inspired her to bring a similar one to the gallery.
Sheena Khalid
“The current exhibition talks to me about memory and childhood,” she says. “I’m interested in the idea of a ‘ghost’ role: who are the people who are not physically present in the scene, but who are very much a part of it? When we move through the world, we carry them with us. The paintings are evocative of that,” she reveals.
A moment from the photobook-inspired storytelling workshop
The central element of the workshop will be navigating how the artworks trigger participants’ own stories about their childhoods. Khalid will encourage them to bring photographs that can help recall an event or an important person in their lives. At the end of the workshop, they will get to share excerpts from the stories they’ve worked on with each other. Reflecting on the overall theme, she adds, “There are often the ominous things which we haven’t voiced, and then there’s the other quiet, the smaller things, which don’t make so much noise. For me, it’s the push and pull of those two that I’m most interested in.”
ON October 12; 2 pm to 5 pm
AT Art and Charlie, 71A Pali Village, Bandra West.
LOG ON TO artandcharlie.com
ENTRY Rs 1200
