Dunya Kalantery

Over the spring term Dunya Kalantery worked with a group of children from Grange Primary school who come to Drawing Room for a weekly afterschool club. Dunya made the environment as child-led as possible. They were struck by how frequently children had been drawing, writing and talking about Palestine, and their feelings of injustice in this political climate. The project became a space to take the children’s behaviour and anxieties seriously, offering them a way to translate their emotions into drawings on paper, fabric and eventually make banners. ‘Dreams’, ‘rage’, ‘big feelings’, ‘small feelings’ were given as prompts for children to demonstrate their own energy, ideas, issues, struggles, frustrations, hopes and desires to play, by using the materials provided. On the final week the children marched their banners and drawings outside to communicate their hopes and struggles. The project tested how we as adults can learn from their responses.

The body of afterschool club was reworked into a series of banners and paper fragments displayed in the Library and Community Studio as part of ROCK PAPER SCISSORS: A Snapshot – a trail of exhibits around Drawing Room, inviting audiences to continue responding to the words – dreams, rage, big feelings, small feelings…

We recently hosted a forum for the ROCK PAPER SCISSORS artists to come together and reflect on projects whilst unpacking ideas through making and discussion.

To conclude and celebrate artist Dunya Kalantery’s 6-week school project with Year 2 and Year 4 children from Snowsfields Primary School, they collectively curated an exhibition of their artwork in their school garden. Dunya carefully crafted a book ‘my stick has a secret its secret is it loves me’ which compiled the children’s original work, scans, printed pages, poems and words.

Dunya Kalantery is a queer artist of colour, who de-centres whiteness, challenges dominant forms of representation and hierarchies of knowledge and experience which are fundamental driving forces of their practice. Dunya uses drawing as a way of thinking, and of telling stories. The stories we tell are ways of exploring ourselves, the world around us, and the way we relate to each other. Graduated from the Royal College of Art, Curating Contemporary Art (MA) 2012 – 2014 University of Sussex, English (BA, First class honours) 2007 -2010 Camberwell College of Arts, UoAL, Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Distinction) 2006.  Currently embarking on an art practice and art pedagogy PhD: Becoming-Like-Lichen: (re)learning symbiosis through intergenerational, interspecies collaboration. Thinking through lichen to explore how material processes can be used as a force for de-centering human-centric and white-dominant modes of thought, learning and teaching.