Devika

Encounter performance art that communicates deeply felt relationships with place 🪨 Looking forward to this evening of durational performances at Tate Britain on Saturday 28 Feb. Three powerful performances exploring time, ritual and memory by Devika Bilimoria, Ash McNaughton, and n:u (melissandre varin). Live Art Development Agency host a screening room exploring how artists have used performance as a practice of freedom and resistance in the British landscape. Tickets on sale now! Including £5 for those on UC / Pension Credit. @devika_bilimoria @fraxin_us @nu.melissandre.varin @thisisliveart @mary_osborn @kanestonestreet Images: 2 - n:u (melissandre varin), dirty nails, 2024, Eastside Projects. Photo by Ashley Carr 3 - Ash McNaughton, Dredge, DISCHARGE, 2024. Photo by Manuel Vason 4 - Devika Bilimoria, Offerings, Future Ritual, 2024. Photos by Fenia Kotsopoulou 5 - n:u (melissandre varin), le monstre de mon papa, 2025. Photo by Tamsin Drury 6 - Ash McNaughton, Hæg, 2025. Still from video by Nina Shen. 7 - Devika Bilimoria, Pind, 2026. Image courtesy of the artist.

*New performance at Tate Britain* A night of three parallel durational performances including Ash McNaughton + Devika Bilimoria + n:u. TATE BRITAIN Land, Material, Memory 28 FEB 7-10PM TICKETS: bit.ly/4kdUoQy link in bio 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘥 (2026) takes its name from piṇḍa, a Sanskrit term meaning body, lump or mass, that references ground rice balls offered as nourishment to the deceased. Activated through pressing, accretion, and decay, the work is created in the wake of the artist’s mother’s death. It brings together biological and dislocated matter from Hindu death rituals refracting metaphysical, material, and psychic thresholds in accumulative action. — It took some time to decide whether this invitation was right for this moment, emotionally, politically, materially and existentially. Holding impossibility is part of living; through deliberation, time, and Kali, I accepted this unique temporal incision of durational live art in the Tate Britain from Joseph Morgan Schofield, curator of Public Practice at Tate, for Land, Material, Memory: performing landscape. This work is formed by the loss of my mother’s body as a site of home through materials that were used in her funerary rites. While devising 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘥, the disruption of ritual spaces for mourning for lives lost to war, genocide, and colonial extraction has been in my heart and hands. The proliferation of rice balls in the Tate Britain also extend as offerings for nourishment to those across these terrains of loss and violence. From a place of personal enquiry, the work ruminates how we carry the dead when death is an unspecified threshold amid augmentation of energy, body, place - encountering cycles of consumption and attachment. — Making work in grief is a ride governed by a trickster. I feel fortunate to have these practices and relations to be in the transformation and swings of it all. Looking forward to being in time with you @fraxin_us and @nu.melissandre.varin Thank you @jmschofield for curating us in a live durational program. @thisisliveart will be there too! 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘥 has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

𝓞𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 documentation (3/3) and write up. Read @nvmiyer writing and thoughts about her experience of the work for @performance_review - thank you for wording the many questions and aspects of this work in your fluid and insightful style. Read - link in bio ✨ From my Offerings Playlist: INXS Need You Tonight Slide Photos: 3, 11 Marco and Baiba 5, 8, 9, 12, @feniakotsopoulou 2, 6, 13, @amias_hanley Second last image - couldn’t do anything without this collection of fine fine art/life/death companions @amias_hanley @audax__audax @nvmiyer This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. #performanceart #liveart #londonart #london #artist #londonartist #melbourneartist #fluxus #chance #ritual #dice #southasianart #southasiandiaspora #35mmfilm #whitechapelgallery #art

𝓞𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 documentation (2/3). 35mm film images taken by the luminous @feniakotsopoulou ♥️✨♥️ Structured as a game of dice where ritual meets chance, this duration of 𝓞𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 accumulated 132 material deposits over three 4-hour performance activations in the London Open Live program @whitechapel Gallery June 2026. From my Offerings Playlist: Jefferson Aeroplane White Rabbit This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. #performanceart #liveart #londonart #london #artist #londonartist #melbourneartist #fluxus #chance #ritual #dice #southasianart #southasiandiaspora #35mmfilm #whitechapelgallery #art

𝓞𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 documentation (1/3) and fam appreciation. Structured as a game of dice where ritual meets chance, this duration of 𝓞𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 accumulated 132 material deposits over three 4-hour performance activations in the London Open Live program @whitechapel Gallery June 2026. During my preparations for Offerings, I have an ever growing playlist of songs that I love and listen to in preparation for the performance. This time I asked people for a song that reminded them of somebody else. I loved receiving these cultural artefacts from others and writing them in my flesh through listening and recitation. Eternal love to Mum who visited especially to see the show. Your decision to see this was the right one. You were at all 4 iterations. I love how you took life as it is - uncertain, fleeting and abundant in transformation. I don’t know how I’ll ever perform this work again. It was dedicated to my grandparents, but it was for you the whole time. To all my family who travel from all across the UK and close people who were there, you are all inspiring and I make my work for you/us. Audax and Nithya, in lucky alignment to share my 40th year with your critical and curious ways through our creative blood - hunger snacks abound! I am overwhelmed by the positive reception from people who attended over the three days, thank you for bringing your time and focus to the work. Many thanks for the folks at @whitechapelgallery for helping all of us put on our best shows for this season and giving live art a place to breathe during these tight and challenging times. Amias, through it all you bring lightness, care and dedication to how we live and make a creative world. At the end when I was deliriously spent, you mopped that floor three times! Your presence and love is a boundless gift, thank you endlessly ♥️♥️♥️ has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. From the Offerings playlist: Nirvana Oh Me (Live) Photos: 2 3 5 7 8 9 10 12-18 @amias_hanley 4 11 @feniakotsopoulou Others @shot_by_devika

October last year, this encounter was offered in honour of my mother, sound practitioner and hypnotherapist, the late Damyanti Azra. Vocal toning was at the heart of her practice—most devotedly through a meditation of 21 AUMs, each resonating with an aspect of the body. AUM, the primordial sound of the universe, unfolds through the vibration of its syllables—A, U, and M—moving across three states of being: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, with the silence between each AUM opening into pure consciousness. Each day, Damyanti shared this meditation live online, inviting others into a field of the bodily and cosmic vibration for clarity of mind, connection to the totality of existence, and peace. You can watch and follow her meditations @elthamnaturalhealing ♥️🌈 IKLECTIK Re-opening (Past event) Sunday 26 October 2026 @peckhamlevels Offerings for our re-gathering: actions of initiation and renewal to begin this new chapter together. Thank you @dygravina @iklectikartlab and everyone who was there for this special re-opening event of this ultra historic and new home of experimental sound and interdisciplinary art in London. Photo 2 and 3 by @wilcoxamazingphoto Photo 4 by @amias_hanley Photo 5 Our last game of chess in London - of course this chess champion won! She taught me from a young age, I won only once. Chuffed that in this last game she was very impressed by the muddles I put her in.

1962-2025 🌈🕊💫 It is with a sunken heart I share that my gorgeous mum Damyanti Azra @elthamnaturalhealing has suddenly passed away from an aneurysm 💔  What joyous brilliance we had the privilege to bask in. I can feel your light within me beaming stronger than ever. Eternal gratitude, for your sacrifices, being by @eduardobilimoria and my sides, championing my creative practices, feeding me the good stuff, listening, laughing and loving me endlessly. Through it all, your curiosity, generosity, abundant perspective and trust was inspirational. You touched so many peoples hearts - you will forever make me smile. What an honour to have witnessed your life and for you to have mine. You are pure light. I love you. I have no more words, only flow. Shanti Shanti Shanti 🕯❤️ 

𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙩 𝙏𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙖𝙩, 2025 *new video work* 13+14 | 20+21 Sept Live Art Development Agency (LADA), London ‘The Body is a Thing In Time’ in FRINGE! QUEER FILM AND ARTS FESTIVAL 2025 @fringefilmfest In this performance to camera, the duration of consuming a familiar transient object in the sun is stretched to a 22 minute action. With a pointed focus on what might happen to the ice cream, I forgot that I too would be subject to melt. The camera I was using has a heat threshold too, so I couldn’t be sure if it had stopped halfway. The piece is a meditation on relationality - climate, desire, impermanence and intensity (later, heat stroke). Performed on the 26th September 2024 in 31 degrees celsius next to Pub El Molion de Blanca along the Segura river of Blanca, Spain, during ON DURATION residency, curated by @raegan.truax at @aadkspain . Since arriving in London @thisisliveart was an important anchor for my practice and life that has become community of excellent folks for me. It’s an honour to have a work amongst other exhibiting live artists screened within this historic live art belly. There’s a lot of exciting long videos of performances - bring lunch! Thank you @kanestonestreet , who is also in the exhibition, for the invitation to share this work.

DISCREET RELATIONS OF DECAY: A FLORAL SPATIOTEMPORAL OFFERING, 2022 This series of twenty-five images can be read in various ways and reading them left to right follows the order I visited the sites, while reading down across days. Opening with the first row, each flower is suspended in the act of being thrown and is followed by images of their final rested offering in the second row. The three remaining rows document consecutive days where I revisited the sites to photograph each flower’s decay and relationship with the laneway’s conditions over time. — A durational site-responsive photo essay observing the decomposition of five flowers dislocated from Brunswick West and offered to five distinct laneways across Naarm/Melbourne. Enlisting a familiar gesture expressed within Hindu, Buddhist and Jain practices known as pūjā, the flowers were carefully thrown within the laneway as a carriage of offering. Occurring over four consecutive days this experimental essay asks - what is the body or system of a laneway? What material conditions arise to call it such? And how can that system of conditions be seen through the insertion of a flower’s presence over time? 📷 Commissioned by Flash Forward Festival 2021 - many thanks to @graffitistudies and the team 🏙️ Part of The City of Melbourne Council Collection #DiscreetRelationsOfDecay #DurationalArt #SiteResponsive #Puja #Naarm #Melbourneart #Melbourneartist #streetart #Melbournelaneways #laneway #Flowers #Decay #PhotographyEssay #FlashForwardFestival #CityOfMelbourne #Materiality #ArtAndEcology #Offering #PerformancePhotography #SlowArt #jacaranda #callistemon #hibisus #tecomastans #bougainvillea #devikabilimoria

CALLISTEMON, Goldie Place. A durational site-responsive photo essay observing the decomposition of five flowers dislocated from Brunswick West and offered to five distinct laneways across Naarm/Melbourne. DISCREET RELATIONS OF DECAY: A FLORAL SPATIOTEMPORAL OFFERING, 2022 Enlisting a familiar gesture expressed within Hindu, Buddhist and Jain practices known as pūjā, the flowers were carefully thrown within the laneway as a carriage of offering. Occurring over four consecutive days this experimental essay asks - what is the body or system of a laneway? What material conditions arise to call it such? And how can that system of conditions be seen through the insertion of a flower’s presence over time? On the first day, I performed a repetition of throwing each flower upward within a respective laneway to visualise a moment of their suspension as an organic disruption within the dense material of the city. After the final toss of each flower, it was left remaining in its fallen position glitching between a gift and litter, open to the affective conditions of the laneway. The conditions of the laneway for this project are time of day, climate, wind, rain, rubbish, leaves, building materials, architecture, undulations, cracks, drains, light, shadows, birds, colonisation, capitalism, labour, bodily fluids, human traffic, and more than human inhabitants. Swipe left to follow the life of the CALLISTEMON in Goldie Lane. From offering to decomposition, with a final rainy day. Last slide is an outtake image, showing relation to @karalinar_art ‘YOU ARE ON COUNTRY’ neon in Flash Forward Festival. Always was always will be aboriginal land. 📷 Commissioned by Flash Forward Festival 2021 - many thanks to @graffitistudies and the team 🏙️ City of Melbourne Council #DiscreetRelationsOfDecay #DurationalArt #SiteResponsive #Puja #Naarm #Melbourneart #Melbourneartist #streetart #Melbournelaneways #laneway #Flowers #Decay #PhotographyEssay #FlashForwardFestival #CityOfMelbourne #Materiality #ArtAndEcology #Offering #PerformancePhotography #SlowArt #callistemon #bottlebrush #youareoncountry #alwayswasalwayswillbe #devikabilimoria

JACARANDA, Platypus Alley. Finally getting to share this durational site-responsive photo essay observing the decomposition of five flowers dislocated from Brunswick West and offered to five distinct laneways across Naarm/Melbourne. DISCREET RELATIONS OF DECAY: A FLORAL SPATIOTEMPORAL OFFERING, 2022 Enlisting a familiar gesture expressed within Hindu, Buddhist and Jain practices known as pūjā, the flowers were carefully thrown within the laneway as a carriage of offering. Occurring over four consecutive days this experimental essay asks - what is the body or system of a laneway? What material conditions arise to call it such? And how can that system of conditions be seen through the insertion of a flower’s presence over time? On the first day, I performed a repetition of throwing each flower upward within a respective laneway to visualise a moment of their suspension as an organic disruption within the dense material of the city. After the final toss of each flower, it was left remaining in its fallen position glitching between a gift and litter, open to the affective conditions of the laneway. The conditions of the laneway for this project are time of day, climate, wind, rain, rubbish, leaves, building materials, architecture, undulations, cracks, drains, light, shadows, birds, colonisation, capitalism, labour, bodily fluids, human traffic, and more than human inhabitants. Swipe left to follow the life of Jacaranda in Platypus Alley. From offering to decomposition, with a final rainy day. Last slide is an outtake image, showing relation to @yandellw ‘End Passage’ countdown installation about climate crisis for Flash Forward Festival. 📷 Commissioned by Flash Forward Festival 2021 - many thanks to @graffitistudies and the team 🏙️ The City of Melbourne Council @cityofmelbourne #DiscreetRelationsOfDecay #DurationalArt #SiteResponsive #Puja #Naarm #Melbourneart #Melbourneartist #streetart #Melbournelaneways #laneway #Flowers #Decay #PhotographyEssay #FlashForwardFestival #CityOfMelbourne #Materiality #ArtAndEcology #Offering #PerformancePhotography #SlowArt #jacaranda #devikabilimoria

London Open Live Rewind | Devika Bilimoria Take a look back at Devika Bilimoria performance of ‘Offerings’ (2025), as part of ‘The London Open Live’, a 13-week programme spotlighting 15 performance artists. Head to our website to find out more about the upcoming performances. Tickets are free, but booking is essential. Book now vial the #LinkInBio. #LondonOpenLive #WhitechapelGallery @devika_bilimoria Film: Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi.