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Love, Life and Art of HowAreYouFeeling.Studio

Doyel Joshi and Neil Ghose Balser’s first work together marking the initiation of their art practice HowAreYouFeeling.Studio was at their wedding. The act illustrated the gravitas behind their work, while the matrimonial sacrament fuse tdheir lives together with their passion. We look at their thought-provoking range of work that ticks a lot of boxes of art, performance and dance, while not fitting into any one.

The act and art of union; Neil and Doyel become part of the main act at HowAreYouFeeling.Marriage

 “Our wedding is an example to shows how we like to work where our life informs our work and vice versa,” says Neil Ghose Balser.

Neil and his wife Doyel Joshi came together to form an interdisciplinary practice called HowAreYouFeeling.Studio creating art installations, creative concepts and sound design with brands, fashion, films, and events for clients including India Art fair, Gucci, Hermes, Nowness, Vogue, Lovebirds and Mercedes to name a few.

The artists decided to mark their foray into the artistic and conjugal world simultaneously by a work of art that is provoking and beautiful at the same time.

In the process to their own wedding, the duo noticed how in Indian weddings societal, cultural, and personal catharsis finds high expression, and thus decided to tap into this emotion at the pivotal point of their life.

“It unfurled our inner worlds, our own conditioning, family, ideas, traumas, and potential. We strongly believe in partnership and how it facilitates velocity, communication, and expression. It is ideally like a catalyst to the clarity of expression. It is like a bouncing board that allows us to look into our own process to the wedding,” says Doyel.

The venue of HowAreYouFeeling.Marriage, Mandawa Castle where artworks enhanced emotion to create depth and to provoke commitment.

As the two artists came together, the strong walls of cultural barriers and intolerance in the country led to an introspection of what contemporary India meant to them. It seemed fitting to use art at that pivotal moment in their lives as a harbinger to their artistic practice together.

Thus began their journey into a life of art spiced with love and a dollop of expressions and understandings of the world till then.

“We strongly believe that every moment, space, situation and circumstance is a chance for art that is reflection, friction and inspiration,” they say.

We speak to the artists about their various bodies of work and the stories behind each one of them.

Doyel Joshi & Neil Ghosh Balser.

SCALE: Your work seems to straddle music, art, and installation and none of them too. Tell us, what was your vision for your studio and explain how you both came to create HowAreYouFeeling.Studio?

The palace gets sprouced up with art installations for the wedding.

Neil: The launch of our work and life together started on our wedding in Rajasthan, India (2022). Installations and the concept of the wedding, how our families came together, with tradition meeting contemporary motifs all found a public platform as it was picked up by Vogue India in their December issue titled “Love in the New Age” which brought our work to a wider stage.

We had a separate practice before coming from backgrounds in the arts, Doyel was more in the visual field working and studying fashion and sculpture at Parsons in New York and I was in a sound and performance-based programme also at Parsons, The New School.

With HowAreYouFeeling.Studio our approach is to investigate emotion in relation to a subject and we create extensions of these in large scale installations, performance, and interventions.

Our partnership and practice have created a space for us to address what disturbs, resonates, and barricades ours and others expression in the world. This embodied through sculptural intervention or performance became a means to express what we already hold within and which is further moulded by what we experience and perceive in the world.

“We wanted our wedding to reflect who we are as people, our world view and our values,” say the artists.

Our vision is to create deeply personal work that finds resonance with an audience, can change the cultural DNA, and makes people question. The idea is to work on new formats of public engagement challenging contemporary practices attempting to expand the scope of what art can do outside of traditional spaces.

The work is rooted both in personal heritage and traditions whilst questioning the ideas around provenance. The medium or channel can be art, music, and performance but we feel intuitively drawn and thrive in merging these or breaking the boundaries creating new forms and combinations.

SCALE: The first work of HowAreYouFeeling.Studio was at your wedding. How did you both make time and space for this “work of art” during a personal time together?

Family, friends and the people around became part of the wedding celebrations as collaborators of the HowAreYouFeeling.Marriage.

Doyel: Our wedding happened to be an example that shows how we like to work where our life informs our work and vice versa.The process of marrying and becoming a family has been a very confronting and beautiful process to say the least. It unfurled our inner worlds, our own conditioning, family, ideas, traumas, and potential. We strongly believe in partnership and how it facilitates velocity, communication, and expression. It is ideally like a catalyst to clarity of expression, a bouncing board that allows us to find synergies.

A blend of love, culture, art and design made the perfect setting for this new-age love story.

We find that while those internal relationships and creative dynamics may differ for each couple, there is a fascination with the idea of what love is and its full expression via art and what it can mean for us humans.

For us, it has unlocked a sort of courage — artistic, entrepreneurial, emotional courage that can only come from feeling deeply safe. Our partnership provides that safety, by not simply leaning on each other but learning to lean on ourselves better.

A perfromance that became part of the wedding.

There seems to be an answer or healing we are intuitively drawn to. Given our wildly different backgrounds, we both needed to do a deep dive into observing and mending our own ‘brokenness’ to be together in matrimony and an artistic partnership. Our work together is a direct result of that process and it is an ongoing one. Of acknowledging traditional notions, our heritage, genealogy and where we come from but shaping them into contemporary notions, paradigms of the world and the future we see for ourselves.

In our expression and work we are mindful that we are at a time where we can lead with our personal stories. Thus, for an audience knowing the writers of these stories and their process can change the dynamics of how we consume stories, how deeply we let things resonate.

Flowers were made locally out of waste fabric in a social business. 

We playfully called our wedding ‘HowAreYouFeeling.Marriage’ (on invites, website etc.) and the installations and part of the ceremonies HowAreYouFeeling.Studio. That allowed us to create a spectrum of perception for guests between tradition and art, work, and life.

Every frame was choreographed for the wedding.

For us the conversation was always about how our marriage represents who we are and where we come from. This is a space equally for our family and friends but also for ourselves and who we are. We find great value in tradition, rituals, ceremonies — especially in Indian culture. It is designed to elevate emotion and create connections and bonds across families, friends, and any boundaries. Expressing all these emotions at our wedding with friends and family from the most different walks of life, villagers in Germany who have never taken a plane, Rajasthani women in ghoonghat, Bengali intellectuals and NYC artist friends was pure joy.
What it became was (in a truly traditional manner) a collaboration of our families/siblings, ourselves and the ‘whole village’ coming together.

SCALE: Does art become more for the moment and less for a longer impact?

From A Stone Marries an Egg.

Neil: In our recent large-scale installation in Mumbai ‘A Stone Marries an Egg’ we had 108 women artisans from UP Deoria perform alongside HowAreYouFeeling.Studio. The female artisans in pink sarees sat in communal formations, in a large gallery space. Seats were left open amid formations for the audience, encouraging them to interact. Or not. Thus, raising questions of class, social constructs and exploring the lines between artist and artisan, audience, and performer.

While it projects a social commentary, our intention was to address ‘the source’ and show the process. This part is more central to our work where the emotion that is conjured through form, colour and sound can act as a vessel for questions and layers of inner bias or inquiry.

A performance that sparks conversations like all art works of HowAreYouFeeling.Studio

We invite the ambiguity around the experience which can allow conversation or question. The show and being there in person were the first part of this work, the second is how we present the work online and what other forms conceptually can be continued from it. We have just created a limited edition of large prints.

The collaborative process of HowAreYouFeeling.Studio.

Whilst nothing beats physically experiencing a work, ideally with all senses — in the end our perception of what is going on in the world is naturally also formed so much through what we see in the mediums we consume. We feel the audience is still very intelligent and critical, if the wor is fresh and original, has depth and feels personal — it works. It is a constraint we welcome but we are equally, and maybe as a response, looking into longer formats now as well as in film, conversations over podcast and OTT. The work itself and installations can also find its place in galleries /spaces or with durational performance pieces where there is an additional level of appreciation and time put into understanding the layers to it.

SCALE: Do you think there is a large gap for such artworks in India and how would you place your work in context to the general art scene in India? And yet you were a part of the India Art Fair and made an impact there. How and thoughts.

Provenance was shown at the India Art Fair 2023.

Doyel: Ideally a work lives on, has multiple editions to it and can travel. We have done the ice installation ‘Provenance’ twice and have had an initial conversation to bring it to the UAE.
This work of HowAreYouFeeling.Studio that ended up at India Art Fair was initially commissioned in 2023 at IF.BE, Mumbai’s historic ice chamber, and explored themes of ownership and heritage. Acting as a palimpsest, the red ice cube installation symbolised the history of its surroundings, where we worked and assembled it with former “owners” of the ice factory that still have a space in the back of the venue, which is now mostly used for events.

The making of the Provenance.

In adapting ‘Provenance’ from Bombay to Delhi for the India Art Fair, 2024, we looked at the influence of local surroundings and regional nuances. We understood that ‘Provenance’ needs to resonate with its surroundings; it commands a sense of belonging. How we engage with a location influences our approach to working within it, that shapes the audience’s interaction with our work, and guides the organic progression of the work.

The interplay between the environment and the cultural context also plays a significant role in shaping the meaning of it and the overall context of the installation. As the fair progressed over four days, the work melted away.

At a commercial art fair, we wonder if that leaves a bigger impact in the audience than being able to purchase and own it?!

The art scene in India seems to be wide awake, aware of its attention globally and internally straddling traditional, political, commercial, hype etc.

We can only credit teams like India Art Fair, gallery spaces and independent curators to be acutely aware and listening to what is going on in the art scene, or at least trying. More and more platforms pop up for different works.

Writers or publications play a big role there too in the way that they showcase art. Curators and cultural organisations keep a close look on what is in the conversation and a young audience seem to be looking for very contemporary as well as traditional and rooted work and spaces.

SCALE: Your most inspiring artist in the global art scene.

Scaffolds of Rituals explores the beauty of rituals that envelop our everyday lives, particularly examining the seemingly mundane act of tying red threads on trees and wrists in India.

Doyel: The narrative and emotional reach of Indian cinema is a big influence on my work. I had a visceral reaction to Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai (2000) when it came out. I also loved Taal (1999) for its incredible music and devotion to beauty. Naach (2004) was my first introduction to abstraction and body as a tool for speaking a type of truth, something fundamental shifted after that. I really resonate with the pain of (Alexander) McQueen. We both love German Choreographer and performance artist Pina Bausch and for me Francis Bacon is a big inspiration
​​Neil: I have been very inspired by Belgian mult- hyphenate Stromae with his simplicity and humanity in his work. John Cage from the Fluxus era with his boldness and ideas on sound and Joseph Beuys’ clarity of thought inspire me.
MJ and Thriller as a body of work will always be what formed my childhood.

Power couples and the worlds they create like Jean Claude and Christo, Yoko Ono, and Lennon…
As a contemporary artist, I admire the vision and scale of a Damien Jalet and Dimitris Papaioannou.

SCALE: What does the future look like for you?

From the wedding that started it all…HowAreYouFeeling.Marriage

Neil: HowAreYouFeeling.Studio is looking both at a future in India as well as outside of India. Whilst our work is deeply rooted here, we grew up between the worlds and want to take our work out of India more. We have been sensing a growing interest within the south Asian community abroad, UAE and ‘Western’ art spaces or platforms.

The art world seems to be looking at India and at the Global East (which is long overdue). It is encouraging to get into an early position with our work to play a role there and be part of the conversation.
Generally, we are looking at being present with our work at larger art spaces with an idea to travel some works. This could be Biennales and traditional art spaces but we are very attracted to novel, odd spaces and partnerships or collaborations – also completely outside of the art world. In-fact we are currently working on our first architectural project — which is of course permanent in nature.

Besides that, as HowAreYouFeeling.Studio, we are working on permanent large-scale installations, prints and smaller conceptual works. We are also looking for a larger studio space.

SCALE: Tell us about your experience being part of sa Ladakh. How was it interacting to the new generation? Were they impressed and excited with the art around them?

Into the Pinke a performance installation explorring the interelationship between the land and its inhabitants at sa ladakh.

Neil: Sa Ladakh has been one of the most rewarding projects of HowAreYouFeeling.Studio — the way it was facilitated by the Biennale’s organizers, experiencing the vast beauty of the land but also working with the local people and 50 local students.
As a Land Art festival our initial thought was to work with the local people and have them communicate with us what they know first-hand from their land first mother nature. This is traditionally often through song and dance from their ancestry, as was here.

We were connected to the students from Mahabodi School through an organization called Local Futures.
We wanted to create a safe space for ourselves and all these 50 Ladakhi students between the age of 14-16 to feel viscerally, the engagement with them allowed us to explore the tension between freedom and order, obedience and disobedience, form and deform.

This work of art at sa Ladakh by HowAreYouFeeling.Studio was co-created by 50 Ladaki students after a three-day workshop that focused on building trust and promoting cultural exchage.

We explored that language in their bodies, within a communal charge with very simple movements and baser instincts, physically embodying their own ideas which we believe can shift things in our minds and in the world. It is intuitively interlinked to how we treat our environment and nature.

Growing up, we all know what that stifling expression feels like — if we do not have it, we want to quite literally die. Unexpressed souls create misery, expressed souls create joy.
As this new generation leans into the future, we did workshops with them and picked up their favourite game ‘Musical Chairs’ which became a central theme of the work. We explored how to motivate a group, the audience and ourselves with a physical expression of individual and communal freedom. And so, using embodiment as a conduit to inner liberation. The teens choose to play and dance to their own local traditional songs with a great deal of joy.

We felt, if they can embody that physical emotion of change or disruption. If they can understand that disorder as well as order can create beauty, they could feel empowered to have a say in the land and choices they make.
Working with them was a real (good) challenge for us as they were extremely sensitive to all we did. It felt like a filter of honesty of movement and expression and we quite honestly fell in love with them.

The team around Sa Ladakh facilitated all and set the tone beautifully, that gave us the freedom and courage to put it together. Also, we were graciously supported by the very kind and helpful folks at the German Embassy in Delhi.

SCALE: How important is art in our daily life… tell us your thoughts with some examples to show its impact.

Doyel: We always seek art in a way, waiting and looking for surprises, mundane, not so mundane.

We feel art and an artist’s job is to make space for people to dream and feel what is in them. At best it heightens our sensitivities to the world, connects us on the levels of our priorities, our sensations, and our sensuality. People are often afraid to think of their ‘giant selves,’ try to still themselves down to a version that somebody else feels comfortable with. We feel acutely aware of moments like these in our day to day and where that is countered either through an action or object (these could become a new installation or performance).

Provenance by HowAreYouFeeling.Studio uses stacked red ice blocks to form a sculpture. It attracts attention by its colour and its size, and later  melts away…

By engaging with everyday objects, scenes and relevant it may just allow us to create extraordinary statements of society based on relevant yet conventional moments. If you take people out of their comfort zone and ordinary it allows them to feel a new feeling and become alert to new things.

One favourite example and maybe perspective on art and daily life but also perception to is John Cage’s comment around his orchestral piece “4:33” where in front of a full audience an orchestra is placed and do not play a single sound for 4:33 minutes after which the orchestra bows. This was blasphemy at that time but Cage would challenge that it was silent and say: “You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.”

SCALE: Your next big spectacle?

The thread used in the creation of Scaffolding of Ritual is a symbolic thread that binds one to the history of India.

Neil: HowAreYouFeeling.Studio is working on an exciting and one of our largest projects for November in Mumbai. Also, on something in LA for early next year and Brighton in summer. Our architectural project will be ready in Delhi at the end of the year.
We have also been in touch with cultural organisations in the UAE and Saudi and surely in Qatar, as well.

All Information and Photographs Courtesy HowAreYouFeeling.Studio