Pro Helvetia New Delhi - Swiss Arts Council

Hemali Sodhi is the founder of A Suitable Agency, a literary and brand consulting agency representing Indian writers and authors. Prior to founding the agency, she worked in publishing, brand marketing, and communications at a global publishing house.

Hemali Sodhi is also the editor of The Book of Dog, and has a keen interest in crime fiction, food, travel, and Calvin and Hobbes. Hemali will be on a research trip to Switzerland.

Pema “Tintin” Tshering’s practice exists between tradition and transformation — blending the visual language of traditional thangka art with contemporary abstraction, multimedia, and pop influences. Through his work, Tintin reimagines Buddhist philosophy, identity, and living culture, questioning how traditions evolve, survive, and remain alive in the modern world.

During his research trip to Switzerland, Tintin will engage with museums, curatorial spaces, and contemporary cultural discourse to explore how institutions can support living and evolving cultures. Using Zurich as a site for inquiry, the trip will serve as an opportunity to study alternative approaches to preservation, curation, and cultural engagement, informing his broader vision of creating more dynamic, responsive, and sustainable cultural spaces in Bhutan and beyond.

Selected for the Synergies grant, “Indo Swiss Digital Arts Exchange” is a collaborative project by the EyeMyth Festival and Mapping Festival.

Currently in its first phase, the project begins by bringing a cohort of Indian music and visual artists to Geneva to present their work and collaborate with international practitioners at the Mapping Festival, across the Groove and Syllepse venues, and beyond. For the full programme, please visit www.mappingfestival.com

In its first year (2026), the initiative lays the groundwork for this digital arts exchange. In the second year (2027), it will introduce two month-long residencies for Indo-Swiss artists, culminating in showcases at both the Mapping Festival and the EyeMyth Festival.

Lhaga Koondhor and Chanel Kah Yin Liang—Zürich-based artists working across landscape, culture, and community through Haus Gawaling.

This research trip began in conversation—about Ladakh, about family, about what tourism and romanticisation do to a place. For Lhaga, movement is epistemology: kora, migration, paths that carry knowledge through the body. The Lamayuru trek is a way of entering these questions with her whole body, across the space between the Alps and the Himalaya.

For Chanel, it’s about going not to observe, but to listen. To walk, to learn, and to sit with the question of what it means to be in a place without extracting from it. Not a comparison, but a conversation.

Chris Lovasoa Kauffmann is a Swiss-Malagasy artist whose work explores the intersection of institutional contemporary art and digital visual culture. He will be on a research trip to Vietnam.

Developed in dialogue with Trần Uy Đức, his project focuses on collective, DIY, and experimental approaches to making, shaped through encounters with the artistic communities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
The residency brings together emerging experimental audiovisual practices from Switzerland and Vietnam, opening space for collaboration, exchange, and shared digital dialogues.

Noor Ahmed, curator of Karachi Biennale 2027, will be on a research trip engaging with Swiss artists whose practices align with the curatorial direction of the Karachi Biennale. The focus of this research includes work that responds to themes of migration, ports and routes of exchange, and water as both material and metaphor, with the intention of inviting artists to participate in the Biennale.

Noor Ahmed’s curatorial work includes the Pakistan Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, the digital curation of Lahore and Taxila Museums, and River Landscapes, a transdisciplinary project between South Asia and Europe.

Working across painting, text, sound, site-specific installations, and site-activating actions, Pulak Sarkar’s practice is grounded in research, critical theory, and spatial politics. During the residency in Switzerland, he will explore the presence of Swiss bunkers within civilian landscapes and the ways these structures continue to shape memory, identity, and national imagination.

His inquiry looks at how such spaces are lived with in the present — whether normalised, repurposed, or left in quiet abandonment — and how collective identity is formed through everyday relationships with architecture, history, and urban space.

Sudeshna Rana is an independent writer, editor, researcher, and poet whose practice moves across print and digital media, with a deep engagement with gender, culture, ecology, visual culture, and digital humanities.

As part of her upcoming research trip in Switzerland, she will further her interest in writing on photography and lens-based practices. Through engagements with institutions such as Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, and time spent at Villa Strauli, the residency offers space to explore new forms of critical inquiry and creative experimentation with text and image.

Madhukar Mucharla is a Hyderabad-based visual artist whose practice works with leather, found objects, and natural pigments to explore caste, labor, and social memory. Rooted in Dalit history and identity, his work draws from traditional leather craft and puppetry to challenge ideas of purity, dignity, and representation through material storytelling.

During the residency in Switzerland, he will research Swiss labour movements, craft traditions, and the cultural meaning of leather, engaging with museums, archives, historians, craftspeople, and local communities. Through workshops, open studios, and public conversations, this exchange will open new dialogues between caste-based labor histories in India and working-class histories in Switzerland.