Kalki Subramaniam
Festival Director
Kalki Subramaniam is a celebrated gender rights activist and artist from India. She found the Sahodari Foundation and runs several art projects to resist discriminations against underprivileged transgender people. She lives in Pollachi, India.
Bridget Paul Shibu
Festival Co-director
Bridget Paul Shibu has several years of curating art exhibitions and organizing art shows. She is an expert in the art management and works in a prestigious art gallery in South of India. She lives in Coimbatore.
Laura B Sherwood Ph.D.
Festival Advisor
Laura B Sherwood is the founder and director of the Transformative Art Project based in Washington DC, USA. Through the organization, she partners with local and international organizations to empower and elevate the voices of vulnerable communities through art.
About The Team
India International Spiritual Art Festival is a unique festival with the vision to bring talented artists around the globe to the main foray enabling them with the visibility and recognition for their works of art. It is a global art festival in its first edition inviting painters and sculptors around the world who use different mediums to express their creativity.
The team of IISAF consists of three powerful women who are passionate about art. The festival was conceived by Kalki Subramaniam who is the Director of the festival and Bridget Paul Shibu is the Co-Director. On a fine morning in December 2020, when they both were discussing about Wassily Kandinsky’s works of art. Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist who is considered as the pioneer of abstract art.
In his book ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ Kandisky wrote:
” When religion, science and morality are shaken … and when the outer supports threaten to fall, man turns his gaze from externals in on to himself. Literature, music and art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt. They reflect the dark picture of the present time and show the importance of what at first was only a little point of light noticed by few and for the great majority non-existent. Perhaps they even grow dark in their turn, but on the other hand they turn away from the soulless life of the present towards those substances and ideas which give free scope to the non-material strivings of the soul.”
IISAF was born out of those words from Kandinsky. The conversation between Kalki and Bridget led to the birth of first edition of the India International Spiritual Art Festival. Nothing can be more appropriate than holding this festival in this crisis period. Holding the light in the darkness of the Covid 19 Pandemic which has stunned the world and changed our lives drastically.
Laura B Sherwood found the Transformative Arts Project during the Covid 19 crisis. Transformative Arts Project is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit founded in USA during the global pandemic to cultivate inclusive, transformative, programs and partnerships that amplify the voices and experiences of communities through creative expression and dialogue.
Both Laura and Kalki have been meeting online everyday for the past one whole year and have conceived so many creative tools. Kalki brought out her book ‘We Are Not The Others’ for which Laura mentored and Kalki cofound the Transformative Arts Project with Laura.
Laura’s passion to create empowering spaces that amplify the voices of underrepresented communities led to her in being the advisor of the festival. The three powerful women form a strong alliance in recognizing artists who deserve their works of art on a global world map.
Want to write to us? Email us at: spiritualartfest@gmail.com.
India International Spiritual Art Festival 