Artspeaks India is a multidisciplinary entity that actively provides advisory and agency services specializing in the arts from South Asia. Since 2009, Ashwini Pai Bahadur has been the Consulting Director, shaping the organization’s vision and impact. As an arts and cultural initiative, Artspeaks India seeks to facilitate, highlight, and sensitize individuals and communities to the myriad ways the arts speak to us, each other, and, most significantly, to themselves.
At the core of Artspeaks, India’s philosophy is a commitment to liberating a vocabulary intrinsic to the arts, providing a framework for form and matter to articulate their aesthetic and interpretive narratives.
Artspeaks India has facilitated, collaborated, organized, promoted, and supported various creative projects, including approximately fifty curated shows, ten community outreach programs, several public art projects, and multiple publications. These endeavours have had a far-reaching impact, including over 5,000 artists from 15 countries.
One of Artspeaks India’s initial exhibitions, Art for Art’s Sake, explored the possibility of unburdening art from preconceived lenses of perception. For Ashwini, this occasioned an opportunity to ask pertinent questions regarding the viewer’s role and the need to seriously consider the implicit and fresh art-critical resources a viewer might bring to art appreciation. Expanding beyond conventional definitions of art, Artspeaks India has, over the years, incorporated heritage and Indigenous art forms, multimedia initiatives encompassing cinema and performing arts, pedagogical ventures such as workshops, talks, and collaborations, public art initiatives, and exhibitions showcasing modern and contemporary Indian art.
In the last two decades, Artspeaks India has established itself as a comprehensive 360-degree advisory service catering to all aspects of the arts, including creative economies. It has served artists, art writers, art galleries, online portals, NGOs, educational institutions, private clubs, and corporate bodies, reinforcing its role as a vital force in the South Asian art ecosystem.