Shazeb Arif S. (b. 1983, Mumbai) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and entrepreneur.
Shazeb served as Executive Trustee (2011-2015) with The Academy of Electronic Arts (AeA), an organization that has been constantly looking into the future and its manifestation through arts, science, media and technology. The AeA has successfully conducted 9 editions of the Carnival of e-Creativity (CeC), an electronic arts / experimental and empowering creativity 'incident' in India since 2006. In 2014, the AeA established the Research and Innovation Ashram #001 in the North East of India as an experimental arts and technology space.
Shazeb founded The Blackout Festival in 2012 - Mumbai's only annual apartment festival run by creative contribution only. The festival researches sub-cultural practices and experimental creativity bringing them together to produce an experiential manifestation of the missing ‘underground’.
The Blackout Festival played out its first international edition in Basel, Switzerland in September, 2015. Spread over 2 weeks of an exhibition with a 3-day-night festival within it, the edition hosted 60+ artists in attendance from 6 continents and 29 artworks.
Shazeb is also Co-founding Residency Director and Chief Curator at KYTA, an international travel and art experiment manifested as a collaborative artist residency in the beautiful village of Kalga in the Parvati Valley in Himachal Pradesh, India.
Co-curated The Story of Light, a public-space festival at the intersection of science, culture and philosophy initiated as India’s contribution to the UN-adopted International Year of Light (2015). Supported by the Government of Goa and multiple patrons, the festival was visited by over 40,000 people including student groups.
Shazeb is currently producing and managing his biggest endeavour yet - The Mumbai Landmark Project - to establish 12 modern-day arts-science-technology marvels for Mumbai city.
Shazeb is also a core member of The Wall Project (India), an initiative that has brought a positive impact across the country with permissible paintings in public spaces. The project is also credited for the globally-recognized symbol, the Great Wall of Mumbai - a 4-km stretch of paintings created by the citizens of Mumbai.
Shazeb is also Co-Founder of Conjure Arts and Media, a Mumbai-New York nexus that is exploring the mediums of films, first generation innovations, hybrid art products and space design. Conjure's films have already been selected at prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Raindance, Dubai and Chicago besides winning major awards in Shanghai, Stuttgart, New York and Los Angeles.
Shazeb was Associate Creative Director at Grey Worlwide, Mumbai (2011-2015) and won multiple Indian and international awards including the Agency of the Year 2014 for the Life of Pi Television Premiere campaign.
As a live performer, Shazeb began mixing visual books. He manipulates his visual works with real-time processing + story telling. He is also a founding member of Godgamut – a live cinema collective and India’s first visual band.
He also writes structured prose and poetry and is interested in the relationship of mathematics and syllabic divisions through stories produced in experimental rhythm.
As an independent curator with a focus on experimental practices and processes across human endeavour, I have explored several questions I’ve had as an individual by searching for answers within original frameworks of inter-disciplinary artistic research and production. I’ve also been actively involved in public space projects and have been researching and developing sub-cultural practices to explore the relationship between art and culture. Most of my work is based in spontaneous creation and expression and usually involves fusing new people to create unknown situations and engineering new collective imaginations of beauty and its future.
With diversified, almost schizophrenic, interests, my projects are usually designed as long-term impact programs but even then, most of them have come to meet each other. The value of the ‘experience’ is the corpus of my life and through all my attempts, this objective remains sacrosanct for myself, the artists I work with and the audience.
As a curatorial process, I think of my projects as my canvas and the multidisciplinary artists I work with as my colours, tools, or chemicals that blend differently in different situations and combinations to produce differentiated experiences. And so the chemistry between different artists and practices urge me to play blind, as unlocking the true potential of the unexpected is what I love the most. And maybe, this way, we will actually find the future in the present tense.
This site is a showcase / portfolio of selected works and initiatives by Shazeb Arif S.
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