Gowry Art Residency is a place for the artists from diverse countries in its residency programmes. It believes in fostering interactions between artists, curators, scholars, writers and young students in the local and global context. We collaborate, share and have interactions with the local community.

The residency programme provides an opportunity to interact, experiment and work with local materials to extend one’s visual language. Kallar offers diverse inspirations as a ancient and is an forest environment. The artists of the city have straddled diverse genres and are part of the divergent contemporary landscape. The challenges of the residency programme will encourage artists to move beyond the comfort of their studio spaces and work in new circumstances.

Gowry Art Residency is situated in Kallar on the southern tip of the Western Ghats, 50 km from Thiruvananthapuram Airport (Kerala’s capital city). The location was specifically chosen because of its closeness to the richly bio-diverse rainforest in the Western Ghats, with its endangered and rare plants and animals.

Gowry Art Residency sits on the banks of the Kallar River, also known as Vamanapuram River, which is sourced from the rainforest. The Vamanapuram River, selected by the World Bank for a dam project in the 1960s, is now the only river in Kerala without a dam following an intermittent struggle by local people that lasted for decades.

Nestled amidst evergreen flora, the entire locale is completely serene and has got a cool atmosphere all round the year, whether it is the hot summers or the wet monsoons.

The visiting artists/writers will have the loveliest ambience imaginable as the house-cum-studio where they will be put up is at Kallar, on the banks of the legendary Vamanapuram river from which long time ago a tribal is said to have picked up precious stones (Hence the name of the place, Kallar that literally means the River of Stones). The river with its ever fresh and cool waters runs just in front of the house which has for its background the beautiful Agastya Mountains full of healing and refreshing herbs. Even the breeze from the mountains has a mysterious quality that will fill you with fresh creative energy. The Mountains are occupied by Kanis, a tribe of healers who also offer rejuvenating massage to the visitors. The Kanis have their own legends and myths and a whole cosmology of their own. In short to be at Kallar is to be in the lap of ever green and ever youthful nature, to be surrounded by the mystique of the mountains, to be enveloped by legends and myths, to be enriched by the dreamy air, to be inspired by the music of the great river and the waterfalls in the mountains and to wake up to the sounds of a hundred birds that fill the air with God’s symphony. The magic in the air will charm and enlighten you and the whole place with its raw, vibrant, positive energy will awaken the instinctive artist, dreamer, mystic and poet in you.