first draft — is a collective of five artist-friends -- Anarya, Sonam Chaturvedi, Priyank Gothwal, Priyesh Gothwal, Akshay Sethi-- to create situations of coming together via pop-up shows, cross-border and diverse collaborations, collective playgrounds, and an emergent form that we call ‘gatherings’- akin to a porch where people sit, converse, debate, differ, evolve, gestate and build relations slowly over time. first draft came into being in 2018 in Delhi, as a series of pop-up shows that later (2021-) evolved into 'gatherings' in response to the pandemic and its isolation. The process behind ‘drafts’ becomes essential in creating a playful space to invite a flux of dialogues, mistakes, accidents, revisions, processes, incidents, and so forth.A gathering is a space to share, think, embrace commonalities as well as differences, and build difficult solidarities over time. It intends an equal and restful space without the compulsion to produce/to meet an end, as propagated by individualised capitalist structures of production and circulation. The relationalities amongst the gatherers and their intimacies take the centre, allowing us to navigate and mend both material and ideological worlds. Gatherings become dynamic moments of convergence through the excuse of a prompt /bring a page; a sound clip; an object; a food item; an anecdote around walking; a language of belonging; an act of disobedience;;;/ to lubricate the conversations and the spatial energies. The moment, the prompt, the space, the people, the conversations shift each time we gather.∴ We gather for the sake of gathering.In a capitalist system that feeds off grief, dissatisfaction and wanting, the joy, warmth and fulfillment of gathering, converging, being in another’s company, its tensions and intimacies, become a small but deeply moving form of resistance today.∴ Play is a revolutionary force. (Virginia Vigliar)There have been 4 pop-up shows and 26 gatherings at/with-- FICA India, Asia Art Archive in India, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan (Delhi), Kaalo.101 (Kathmandu), Watermans Art Centre (London), Temporary Unit (Singapore), Body Embedding Residency (Vienna), Peripheral Acts (Dubai), and with artist-friends. first draft is the Indian collaborator in creating the South Asian Playground with artist-run independent spaces in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.----Anarya is a visual artist based in Delhi. She focuses on creating engaging content for young audiences and works as an art educator. Illustration, animation, and comics are some of the mediums she explores in her practice. She is currently the Programmes Manager at Artreach India and a Guest Faculty for the M.A. (Visual Effects and Animation) program at Jamia Millia Islamia University.Sonam Chaturvedi is an artist, collaborator, place-maker and educator, based in Delhi. She is Programmes manager at Artreach India (Delhi), and has been a Research Assistant in the Anthrofuture project at University of Vienna, and Visiting faculty at Shiv Nadar University (Delhi NCR).Through her practice, she tries to understand the ecology of Time and Intimacy in capitalism-- the speeding economy, politics of sleep, occupation and intimacy of night, gestation and time-valuations by exploring the politics of the contemporary (con- ‘together with’ + tempus, tempor- ‘time’)/shared time. Her initiatives and collaborations include first draft, -out-of-line-, pixel:dust, terrace/6464 and South Asian Playground.Priyesh Gothwal (b. 1993) is a visual artist based in Delhi, who works with drawing, text, still and moving images. His work centers on exploring the role of language in its various narrative configurations. He is interested in looking at how images, symbols, and texts function and contribute to forming narratives.
He completed his MFA from Shiv Nadar University (SNIoE), 2017 and was a resident artist at the Ashkal Alwan- Home Workspace program in Lebanon, 2019-20. Priyesh is one of the founding members of first draft and has initiated a series of Book Shows. He currently manages and teaches in the BFA program at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat.Priyank Gothwal (b. 1993) is an art practitioner based in Delhi, working with lens-based mediums and graphite drawings. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. His artistic practice and research focus on understanding how time is organised and experienced in modern societies, particularly in relation to colonialism.
Priyank graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Shiv Nadar University in India in 2017. He is an adjunct faculty at the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonispt, and a founding member of the first draft art initiative.Akshay Sethi` is visual artist and educator based in Delhi. His practice explores the relationship between the personal and political, contemplated through everyday experience, within the domain of the ordinary and the quotidian. He is a recipient of Inlaks international residency program at ISCP New York 2023.