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. The children have been exploring their feelings and dreams through play and self-led material exploration. Words such as ‘big feelings’ ‘small feelings’ ‘dreams’ and ‘rage’ were posted around the room as prompts for drawing and mark-making. On the final week the children marched their banners and drawings outside to communicate their hopes and struggles.

The body of afterschool club work has been displayed in the Library as part of ROCK PAPER SCISSORS: A Snapshot – a trail of exhibits around Drawing Room to coincide with the Drawing Biennial 2024.

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.