About Seamless
Each year the Asialink Arts Residency Program sends approximately 30 Australian writers, performers, artists and arts managers to undertake residencies in Asia. The program provides artists the opportunity for in-depth research, stimulating cultural exchanges, international collaboration and uninterrupted time for creativity.
There are also opportunities for young artists from the host country in Asia to take part in a Reciprocal Residency. Asialink provides the details of artists from Asia who have accepted funding for completing artist residencies in Australia.
Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad and Kush Badhwar
Kush Badhwar is a young Australian-Indian new media artist who uses photography, moving image, performance art and community art to explore cultural production and representations of modern urban life.
He collaborates with an artist collective called WALA and creates situations and encounters that provoke dialogue. His work is rebellious and curious. One of his recent films is about a road trip from Sydney to Canberra; he travels with three friends and a mouth of water.
Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad is a prize-winning artist working with photography and urbanism. He gained a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Design from the University of Technology, Sydney before working on a series of photographic commissions and self-initiated projects which led to his acceptance to the Royal College of Art, London.
Since completing a Master of Arts, Bahbak has established his own practice that has been involved in international exhibitions and commissions including the London Festival of Architecture, Serpentine Gallery, Barcelona's Sonarmatic Art Festival and Derby's Format Photography Festival.
In 2011 Kush Badhwar and Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad undertook an Asialink residency as a collaborative duo at Sarai, a program of the Centre of the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. The film screening Seamless: Three months in Delhi with Kush Badhwar and Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad is the culmination of the pair's residency in Delhi and journey through India.
Seamless features a collaborative video of the same name by Badhwar and Hashemi-Nezhad which was developed during the residency; individual works during the residency; individual works by the artists; and another collaborative video by each resident working with artist Pratik Sagar.
Cultural identity and public spaces are shared interests of Badhwar and Hashemi-Nezhad. Seamless forms part of an ongoing investigation by the artists in using design elements and moving image to render public space as an expansive studio.
Acute observations and collected images of quotidian behaviour are projected to ground the fleeting moments of public life, patterns of movement and their transitory nature.
Video: Seamless