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Visual Artist Portfolio
COVER ARTWORK + LAYOUT
for
ARTEM magazine
Artem is an independent print magazine that celebrates works-of-art and artists
from the Northeastern states of India, delving into visual arts, performance arts and
writings from the region. Unraveling stories with research, honesty and insight,
Artem is based out of Sikkim. Working to find home-grown masterpieces,
from around the region.
I worked as a creative director and designer for four of its issues.
This was the first cover art I designed for the magazine. This issue had no cover story in particular.
So I thought it would be interesting to take one or two elements/characters from all the stories inside and juxtapose it in the form of a collage. Although it was an interesting take, there was a lot of back and forth on the direction we should take with this cover. The team finally agreed to take the 'drokpas' (Tibetan yak herders) out for the cover, since it was our first in-house photo essay, the photographs for which, I had taken. Their clothes are quoted with strong statements that are made in this issue by various artists, symbolizing the 'social fabric' of the northeast, quite literally.
For this issue of Artem, our cover story was Desire Machine Collective. A collaborative art practice between Guwahati-based media artists Sonal and Mriganka, who've been fielding artistic interventions at the interface between art, science, technology and ecology. In the interview, they spoke about time and other flows and how their work space represents so much of their reality. Taking this as an inspiration, I decided to illustrate their studio space, for the cover, which is an abandoned dockyard. Dipping this issue in a sea green became very fitting, with the back cover consisting of flowing outlines which is an extension of the space, that flows into infinity, also symbolizing reflections.
In the first story, 'experience, share, delete' the writer talks about experiencing Kusama's exhibitions at the Broad museum. I've designed the whole story in the form of dots, which is Kusama's signature style. I wanted here, to hypnotise the reader in the works of this brilliant artist. The colors red and white are how one imagines Kusama, more often than not. The second story, 'A curator's quotes' is about the Feminist Memory Project at a photo festival in Nepal. I've laid the story out with the photographs I'd taken of the exhibit, in the form of the exhibition itself (text on walls) so that it transports the reader to Kathmandu, where the story takes place.
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