The hand is a friend of the heart,
but the mind comes in between  

This is what makes it art

What or who is a “friend”? Who is of “kin”, and who, an “ally”? What about the “comrade-in-arms”? The sakhi, and the yaar, and the jigar-ka-tukda? Mitroooooo… What about the creative collaborator with whom you share your ideas before they are published? What about the lover who is still beside you, only because they knew, first, to be your friend? What about the “guru”and the “shishya”? The shagird and the wingman? What about the pakhad-mané-dou? What about the parent, and the enemy, who learnt the ways of friendship? Is friendship only about emotion? About Feeling? About Reason and Self-preservation? Collaboration, and Curation? Can friendship be generative? 

Artists, Rasiks, and Creative practitioners often invoke their “friends”, both dead and alive, who inspired their practice; friends, perhaps, who taught them, who motivated them, collaborated with them, even fought with them as they gave them space, acted as patrons and protectors. We think of the glorious dead – those icons whose tareekas of art-making became our training manuals – as “friends in art”. But friendship often sits at the intersection of idea and practice. While it swerves into the “event” of the painting, the exhibition, or the Biennale, political bonds of friendship are forged in the labour of making. Does it evolve? This friendship. Could we think of friendship with material and the non-human? What about performance, and editing, artifice and indigeneity? How do material associations and vitalities invoke friendship in trajectories of invention – into the future; and archive – in the past?

Does friendship have a caste? A gender? An ethnicity, a class, or a religion? Does it desire? Does it seek freedom? Does it have patience? Or an origin? Does it have a colour or form? What is the shape of friendship? Can we hold the friend with the senses, the way we hold their “spirit” in our imaginations? Can we think, together, about “friendship” as a guiding thematic, while paying attention to “practice”, reflexively. In poetry, the “Ars poetica” is a device that turns in on itself. Most often, it refers to a poem about the nature of poetry, about technologies of writing, and about form, even as it employs poetic forms in its construction.

Could we think about artistic practice through the “technologies” of friendship?

Dear Friend, I am asking you to write … into poetry, and photobooks, collaborations and Biennales, festivals and paintings, installations, and sculpture, both figurative and abstract, extraordinary and commonplace. Write about imaginariums of filial affection transformed in the theatres of conflict. Write about two friends sitting together and watching the moon. Write about the political, the personal, and the public.

Write about the intimate
as a shared epiphany.

Send us a 250-500 word pitch with your idea. The form is flexible. We are open to submissions that negotiate the shifting boundaries of poetry, essay, paper, article, creative fiction and non-fiction. You can also pitch ideas for writing that blends text with image:

Write to artespace.editorial@galleryespace.com, with the subject line “PITCH for ArteSpace FRIENDSHIP edition”:

DEADLINE: Monday, May 8th, 2026

Your email should contain


i) PITCH (250-500 words): Concept, relationship to theme, and form of writing you hope to explore

ii) A Bio-note (200 – 300 words), with links to at least 2 published works

Selected pitches will be given a writer’s fee of Rs. 10,000 – Rs. 18,000; the exact amount will be decided on the basis of research scope, article length, and other considerations at the discretion of the gallery and editor.

 
Sub-themes: Your pitch can address any of these, or use them for inspiration

– Comradeships of Creation : Cultures of Creative Activity

– The Artist’s Workshop

– “Schools” of Thought and Work

– Friendship as “Event”

– Friendship Economies : The Business and Transactions of Friendship

– Aesthetic Narratives of Friendship

– More-than-Human Friendships

– Queering Friendships

– Friendships of Touch 

– Divine Friendships and Profane Genealogies

– Aesthetic Affinities of Resistance

– The Aesthetics of Care, and the Ethics of Shared Labour

– Genealogies of Friendship

– Friendship as Literary or Aesthetic Text

~ Aranya Padil
(Founding Editor, ArteSpace)