Art for Change in partnership with the Centre for Imagination, Woodstock School organized the second edition of the Woodstock Alumni Artists Residency in September 2024.

“As the mist rolled in, sheets of rain followed, beating down on the thirsty seeds and rolling down to the ground. Mini rivers opened up, flowing through every crack they could find and bringing life in their wake. Miraculously, the more the rain came, the more the spores began to stretch out and sprout. Little Fibi, along with the other tired and anxious spores, felt a new force of life wake up inside. Some part of her that had been closed began to open, to unfurl. After the growth began, she just couldn’t be stopped! When she looked around, the whole village had come alive. For the first time, she could see her fellow villagers clearly.” Excerpt from the story of Fibi the Fern, on which the logo for the Centre for Imagination was based.

The last two weeks of September as the monsoon was in recession, six alumni artists from across India and the globe came to this familiar hillside for immersive engagement and art-making at the second edition of the Woodstock Alumni Artists Residency. Prompted with the theme of ‘Unfurling’ during the life-giving monsoon season, the residency was aligned to unpack layers of person and place, interactions of alumni with their alma mater and the community and in the particularity of this monsoon season in the Himalayan mountains.

Underlying focus on interfaith and intercultural dialogues added to learning more about the Woodstock experience, exploring what it means to each of us vis à vis the idea of unfurling, reminiscent of the birth of a fern. Each art work in this exhibition is made with ideas of a life force that helps us understand our creative intercultural endeavor.