Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 15 November 2024–25 February 2025

Sandeep TK is an artist from Thalassery, Kerala, India. He works with mediums such as photography, video, and text to explore his experiences as a queer person navigating class and caste identities within the Indian context. Sandeep’s work often reflects on his journey from a working-class background to an upwardly mobile social circle, examining how this transition has impacted his interpersonal relationships and his attempts to fit into a socially accepted, “civilized” culture.

Courtesy of Sandeep TK

Toy boy from Malabar and his Journey to Wine cheese and Choclates, 2023

During his residency at IASPIS Sandeep TK will continue working on his project “Let me add something in my own melody” with the materials he collected from Basel Mission Archives in Switzerland. The Basel Mission was a Christian missionary operation, a European venture marked by the imperialist overtones of its time. While the mission was primarily driven by religious conversion and a “civilizing” agenda, the missionaries also brought fresh perspectives to the region and recognized the oppression of untouchable castes. To the extent they were able to help, their efforts were appreciated, despite being propelled by religious fervor. As someone from one of the untouchable castes affected by the mission, Sandeep discovered hundreds of letters written in Malayalam by people from the Malabar region, recounting their experiences with the Basel Mission. He is currently creating visual representations of these letters, engaging and playing with the words he found in them, as he believes much of the meaning expressed centuries ago still resonates today, lending itself to dramatic, poetic, and poignant expression.

Sandeep had his first solo exhibition, Singularity, at Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore in 2018, followed by his second solo exhibition, Let Me Add Something in My Melody, at Villa Renata in Basel, Switzerland, in 2022. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, including Empowerment at Kunst Museum Wolfsburg, 2022-2023. His work has also been featured in various film and photo festivals, including FIF – Belo Horizonte’s International Festival of Photography in Brazil; KG+ Kyotography in Japan; and Vantage Point in Sharjah. His videos have been showcased at The Palace International Queer Film Festival in Bristol; the Bangalore Queer Film Festival; and the Festival of Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists. In 2020, Sandeep received the Inlaks Fine Art Award, and he participated in the Khoj Peers Residency in 2021. He was also awarded the Pro Helvetia Studio Residency in Switzerland in 2022. Most recently, he received the Robert Bosch Crossing Borders Grant.