The Art for Change International Artist Residency is an intense 2-week opportunity for seven international artists to live, learn, and create art alongside Indian artists in a collective exploration of the theme ‘Boundary Crossings: Artists in Interfaith Dialogue’. The residency will take place in the Himalayan hill town of Mussoorie, a site ideally suited to engage this theme with a rich diversity of historic and contemporary religious sites and communities, from ancient sacred forests and nearby pilgrimage sites to contemporary Hindu, Jain, and Muslim temples and shrines, from historic Christian churches built by the British to contemporary Indian Christian communities, and a large thriving contemporary Tibetan Buddhist community that was established by the Dalai Lama when he first left Tibet before establishing his base in India at Dharamsala.

Participants will explore how artists can consider spirituality, faith, challenges within it and through it open dialogue for interfaith and intercultural dialogues in local and global contexts in relation to role of art and artists in society. In addition to site visits, the program invites resource people who have explored these subjects, speaking through their personal and professional experiences to foster dialogue and fruitful conversations and feed the artists’ work in studio throughout the residency. While considering these thematic directions, the program brings together artists to interact, share, and build connections with each other, receive professional mentorship, take part in critical conversations, daily reflections, and through this process make artwork that will be exhibited in a culminating exhibition open to the public, at the end of the program. Rachel Hostetter Smith (Gilkison Distinguished Professor of Art History at Taylor University, USA), who has led international intercultural artist programs in places as diverse as Indonesia, South Africa, China, and, previously, with Art for Change in India, will serve as the residency’s mentor. International participants will have a couple of days of orientation in Delhi before joining the national participants for the residency in Mussoorie.