By IANSlife

July 27, 2023 (IANSlife) French Embassy in India and theFrench Institute in India announced the 17 winners selected for its first season of residencies under the umbrella of its newly launched residency programme Villa Swagatam. From this month until spring 2024, these artists and writers will spend between one and three months in India in one of the 16 partner residences. These residences have been chosen for their ability to connect residents with the most innovative and creative of contemporary India. They reflect, through Villa Swagatam, the desire to explore the Indo-French dialogue on the arts, live performance, and literary creation in the broad sense of the term.

Since its inauguration by the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, in New Delhi on 3 March, the Villa Swagatam network of residencies has continued to reflect this desire to welcome others and share know-how, with the clear aim of enabling residents to interact with a local network of professionals and peers so as to offer the fullest possible immersion. Villa Swagatam offers exploratory residencies that aim to spark both inspiration and professional connection, without focusing solely on the issues of production.

The call for applications was open for all writers, cartoonists, visual artists, performing arts professionals, and designers from 20 April to 5 June 2023. The call was relayed by prestigious French partners: art and illustration schools, residency centres, artistic and literary institutions, etc., all of whom were keen to publicise the offer to the communities of artists and writers they bring together. In all, over 200 applications were received. Teams from the French Institute in India and Indian partner organisations then met to peruse each application. 

The final selection has lined up 17 extremely varied profiles: some candidates are very young, while others are more established. The former will be supported by partners keen to help them develop their professional skills, while the latter would be exposed to new techniques and environments for enriching their practice. For most of the candidates, this will be their first experience on Indian soil, with the hope that it will give rise to fruitful, long-term collaborations. For others, it will be a unique opportunity to renew their professional ties with a country they have already visited, and to bring a specific project to fruition. 

The Institut français en Inde hopes in the long term to unite these various prize-winners into a community of players keen to further cultural relations between France and India.

With this first cohort, Villa Swagatam joins prestigious French initiatives aimed at creating networks of artistic residencies around the world. These include Villa Albertine in the United States, Villa Kujoyama in Japan, Casa de Velázquez in Spain, as well as Villa Médicis and the Grand Tour in Italy. From its second edition, Villa Swagatam aims to develop residencies for Indian artists and writers in France, ensuring an ever greater flow of exchanges and mutual enrichment.

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