Route, Rut, Lane: A Karkhana Collaboration
curated by Nancy Kay Turner, brings together artists S. Portico Bowman, Carlyn Clark, Johnny Fox, Margaret Lazzari, Luke Reichle, Chris Russell, Caryl St. Ama, Nancy Kay Turner.
Karkhana is the Urdu term for the imperial-sponsored workshops that produced manuscripts for Mughal Emperors from the sixteenth until the nineteenth century in what today is India and Pakistan. In these workshops, the production for a single work of art was divided among various collaborating “masters.” However, this version of the karkhana collaborative technique, took the eight artists eight months as sixteen works on paper circulated in a prescribed order until everyone had worked on each piece. Each artist created the first layer on two surfaces and then sent them on their way. Eventually, everyone worked on all 16 pieces (though one went astray and was never found).
This model of Karkhana is particularly exciting in art making today as artists across divides (gender, age, geography) can collaborate to produce artworks that are at one point in time completely theirs, but by the end of the process are also completely hybrid works.
For additional information, please visit the site created during the project: https://karkhanaproject.weebly.com/
Click on the titles below to see the work in progress.
To purchase one of these pieces, please email us at admin@hana-kark.com.
The evolution of Dark Matter, created by Ric Kasini for Kolaj Magazine