Home Sweet Home is a research and publication platform to investigate independent, artist-led and, curatorial projects in India that exist on the fringes of the mainstream art market occupying non-commercial spaces, to enable artistic engagements. Home Sweet Home started as an exhibition series in 2015 and occupied domestic spaces to exhibit works of art.
Mine is not the first generation disillusioned by the mainstream art world. Nor is this disillusionment specific to my geographic location. There is a history of artists creating a space for themselves away from the galleries, art fairs, and museums. Home Sweet Home is part of this long history of artists creating spaces for themselves and their peers, something that doesn’t work on the familiar models of transactions and value. We exist precariously within an ecosystem of art institutions. It will be very easy and rather lazy if I describe Home Sweet Home as a critique of the white cube gallery model. Yes, it is a critique, but which alternative model isn’t? Often such semantics assume that the alternative spaces offer some kind of an ultimate solution to all the ‘evils’ of the mainstream art world. In my experience, they both do and do not. An ultimate inclusive community isn’t quite possible and anything we create can only exist in dialogue with other systems both mainstream and alternative. The need for heterogeneity and plurality is the reason why a space such as Home Sweet Home came into being, and it would be foolish to attribute its existence only to being a critique of the mainstream.
- Chinar
- Chinar
The first website of Home Sweet Home was hosted on the Small Victories Project. The website was designed and envisioned by Nihaal Faizal.
Small Victories was a free website platform that created websites from files in Dropbox. The Home Sweet Home website was hosted on Small Victories From 2016 to 2021, when they finally shut down. It gave us a platform to exist for free and with a project that seemed in sync with our larger vision. We remain nostalgic of our old website and Small Victories. Here is the documentation of the old website.
Small Victories was a free website platform that created websites from files in Dropbox. The Home Sweet Home website was hosted on Small Victories From 2016 to 2021, when they finally shut down. It gave us a platform to exist for free and with a project that seemed in sync with our larger vision. We remain nostalgic of our old website and Small Victories. Here is the documentation of the old website.
