Leela Keshav has been selected as the first participant in ‘Write Now’, a new writer’s residency in partnership with Hauser & Wirth.
Keshav is a spatial practitioner and writer from Canada completing graduate studies at the Architectural Association in London. Her current research explores legacies of colonial botany, reparations discourse, and conservation beyond the human-nature dichotomy. She is a recent alumna of New Architecture Writers and an editor for AArchitecture. Her writing has been published in the Architectural Review, ROOM Magazine, Unootha Magazine, and Chutney Magazine.
For the duration of the residency, Keshav will document characters – both human and non-human – inhabiting and passing through Durslade Farm and its surroundings. Incorporating interviews, conversations, overheard words and observations, her writing process will weave together real and imagined voices that entangle past, present and future, complicating the linearity of time. Drawing from assemblage, utopian and feminist theories, she will explore writing that is plural and multiperspectival. By critically engaging with the artists-in-residence, Keshav aims to situate their work – and herself – within the multiplicities of the Hauser & Wirth Somerset’s ecology. Inspired by the work of Firelei Báez, she is interested in a writing practice that weaves anecdote with fact and archive with fabulation.
In addition to learning about the work and process of resident artists, Keshav will be mentored by ArtReview’s editorial team and Hauser & Wirth Somerset’s gallery team, to help shape her research and the outcome of the project. At the end of her residency, her written text will be published on artreview.com. As part of our wider learning program, Keshav will host a public workshop about her residency, as well as exploring her approach to writing and creative practice.
