French Embassy in India announces winners of Villa Swagatam 2023-2024

From this month until spring 2024, these artists and writers will spend between one and three months in India in one of the 16 partner residences.

These residences have been chosen for their ability to connect residents with the most innovative and creative of contemporary India. They reflect, through Villa Swagatam, the desire to explore the Indo-French dialogue on the arts, live performance, and literary creation in the broad sense of the term.

Since its inauguration by the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, in New Delhi on 3 March, the Villa Swagatam network of residencies has continued to reflect this desire to welcome others and share know-how, with the clear aim of enabling residents to interact with a local network of professionals and peers so as to offer the fullest possible immersion. Villa Swagatam offers exploratory residencies that aim to spark both inspiration and professional connection, without focusing solely on the issues of production.

The final selection has lined up 17 extremely varied profiles: some candidates are very young, while others are more established. The former will be supported by partners keen to help them develop their professional skills, while the latter would be exposed to new techniques and environments for enriching their practice.

For most of the candidates, this will be their first experience on Indian soil, with the hope that it will give rise to fruitful, long-term collaborations. For others, it will be a unique opportunity to renew their professional ties with a country they have already visited, and to bring a specific project to fruition.

With this first cohort, Villa Swagatam joins prestigious French initiatives aimed at creating networks of artistic residencies around the world. These include Villa Albertine in the United States, Villa Kujoyama in Japan, Casa de Velazquez in Spain, as well as Villa Medicis and the Grand Tour in Italy.

From its second edition, Villa Swagatam aims to develop residencies for Indian artists and writers in France, ensuring an ever greater flow of exchanges and mutual enrichment.

Meet the residents