In 2022, the theme of the Loose Joints and Mahler & LeWitt Studios Publishing Award was Publishing Performance. We invited applications from artists that engage directly with performance and photography: whether through choreography and the body; through staging and fictional narratives; through notions of voyeurism and control; or through collaborating with the camera to record interventions and gestures. We also invited applications from artists with established backgrounds in live performance, choreography and dance that are interested by incorporating visual techniques into their practice.

The winner of Publishing Performance 2022 is Abhishek Khedekar (IN), for his project Tamasha. 

Khedekar’s experimental docu-fiction follows a one-hundred-person travelling ‘family’ that that live and perform nomadically across the state of Maharashtra in India. The Tamasha are a folk performing arts group, who incorporate dance, movement, music and the visual arts since the 1800’s. Khedekar uses a mixture of archives, interventions, documentary and collaboration to visualise this often-discriminated group through experimental and surreal visual narratives. 

Publishing Performance 2022 was supported by contemporary gallery and photography agency WEBBER, with additional support from Picter. The jury included artist Luis Alberto Rodriguez, writer Mahmoud ‘Mo’ Mfinanga, and WEBBER founder Chantal Webber.

→ Pre-Order Tamasha by Abhishek Khedekar through Loose Joints

Read more about Abhishek Khedekar's residency at Mahler & LeWitt Studios