NEXT-STEP Residency Programme 2025

1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery’s annual NEXT-STEP Residency Programme gives a platform to five emerging artists to reside at 1Shanthiroad Studio for four weeks, allowing them the liberty to experiment with ideas, materials and collaborations. The residency programme provides artists with an environment that is conducive to bridging the gap between the early stages of their education and their career beginnings.

In the early planning stages, the 1Shanthiroad team reflected on the post-pandemic shifts in artistic processes and residency culture. While online residencies had become a common solution during periods of restriction, we recognized that the core of the Next Step experience lies in presence and proximity, in shared spaces, studio conversations, and direct mentorship. With these principles in mind, an open call was announced in May 2025 to invite five promising young artists from different parts of the country. The jury consisting of visual artist Sandip Kuriakose and filmmaker Babu Eshwar Prasad selected the residency awardees out of 270 applications. The announcement was made on 16 July 2025. The selected artists were—Aditi Suneja, Amith M Nayak, Boris Colin, Shadiya CK, and Shreyasi Pathak.

During the residency, Aditi explored Bangalore through readings and encounters, tracing the city like a shifting constellation. Her research led her to rangoli as both ornament and offering, protection and sustenance. Through digital prints, cyanotypes, rice flour sculptures, and image transfers, she explored gendered ritual, unseen labor, and the ephemeral beauty of urban gestures.

Amith’s practice, driven by curiosity, begins in Bangalore’s Sunday bazaar, where he collects mechanical and found objects. Drawing inspiration from the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, he experimented with cyanotypes using moving objects to capture motion. His globe sculpture, layered with currency, reflects on the fragility of global value systems.

Boris investigated the disappearance of Dharmambudhi Tank, now beneath Bangalore’s Majestic Bus Stand. Through speculative instruments like the Memory Density Meter and Absence Gravity Meter, he measured the ghost of the lake—its memory, density, and cultural sediment transforming absence into presence.

Shadiya’s residency journey involved connecting image-making with embodied memories through plants. Inspired by Lalbagh’s landscapes, she explored graveyards as living monuments—green spaces that communicate stories of time and continuity.

Shreyasi examined the politics of accessibility, beautification, and design, connecting modernist ideals of perfection with exclusion of disabled bodies in public spaces and their architecture.

1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery is a space centred on housing & hosting alternative arts practices in the city of Bangalore, India. With a non-commercial art gallery and multiple residency studios for Indian and International art practitioners, the space takes pride in cultivating artist-in-residency programs that bring together artists from diverse backgrounds & disciplines to foster engagement, conversation and exchange of critical ideas and insights with the local community.

www.1shanthiroad.com