Vidisha-Fadescha

Vidisha-Fadescha (they/them) is an artist-curator working across arts and cultural disciplines. Their video work engages performance and text, sharing pluralities of body, archive and collectivity. They focus on collaborations, collectives and experiences as a norm-critical pedagogy to Queer hegemonies. 

Reflecting upon intimacies on the dancefloor and how body movements are an archive of histories, violence and desire, in 2020, Fadescha exhibited ‘Burn All The Books That Call You The Unknown’ in Western Sydney supported by Parramatta Artists Studios and Australian Council for the Arts. They also installed a video ‘Qworkoholic Anonymous’, a meeting with Joey Cannizarro that looks at queer labour and fatigue at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2020-21). They were a part of ‘Fotofest International Biennale’ (Houston) in 2018. In 2020, they were commissioned by International Curators’ Forum for Blue Skies conversation series, with Jyotsna Siddharth they produced a dialogic album about experiences in the pandemic called ‘Walking Upon Bodies’. 

Fadescha hosts Party Office, an anti-caste, anti-racist, a trans*feminist art & social space. It investigates the commons through intersectional enquiries, dialogues & celebrations towards critical future publics. With Party Office they curated and commissioned projects including “Fellowship- Archiving Anti-Caste Work on Social Media”,  two projects as a part of Collective Practices a project of Acud Macht Neu, Berlin; Nottingham Arts Mela, UK; southasia.art; Abr, India; and currents.fm among other projects. 

Vidisha in conjunction with Shaunak Mahbubani, as ‘After Party Collective’, released ‘some dance to remember, some dance to forget’ a video showcased at Nottingham Arts Mela (2020) and SAI-Chicago (2021). They have collectively curated ‘Queer Futures Potluck Party’ (Goethe-Institute/ Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi, 2019) and ‘Queer Futures Archive’ (Parramatta NSW, 2020). Upcoming projects in 2021 include ‘Consent of the Governed: Kink, Constitution and Race’ co-edited with Party Office, ‘Trans* Futures Archive’ at ISCP NYC, ‘Party at the End of Gender-Normativity’ at WIENWOCHE 21, Vienna, and ‘Trans* Dance Revolution’ at apexart NYC.

Fadescha is also a sound artist, DJ and a party organiser at clubs and other informal gatherings. They are a founding member of collectives in India that counter cis-het male dominant club scene and were an artist at ‘The Nightlife Residency’ by iprojectspace and The Neighbourhood in Beijing (2019) and invited artist for ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ by Publics and Museum of Impossible Forms in Helsinki (2019).