‘The echo chambers are unhealthy, like incestual reproduction that leads to gene malfunction’

Mumbai: Skinder Hundal took on the mantle of the Global Director of Arts at British Council in 2020, at a time when the world had come to a standstill, quite literally. It was a period of personal crisis – Hundal lost both his mother and sister during the pandemic – that year. “At the time, I was with my father in Birmingham, trying to keep his spirits high, and simultaneously working from a bedroom, attending all the team meetings and liaising with all the networks,” he recalls. “I kept wondering if we’d ever leave our rooms and be back in the outside world. However, I was staying optimistic; knowing we can all get through this.”

Hundal’s optimism paid off.

In 2022, when British artist Sonia Boyce’s installation ‘Feeling Her Way’, which combines video, collage, music and sculpture won the Venice Biennale’s prestigious Golden Lion prize, it was momentous. She, after all, is the first black woman to represent the UK at Venice. It also represented and stood for “inclusivity”, a mandate Hundal believes is the way forward for the world. “It felt even more incredible when an excited duo came charging in my direction there and acknowledging that a ‘brown dude’ like me is running a global arts programme,” he shares, seated at a suburban five-star hotel in Mumbai. “I grew up in the suburbs of Birmingham and it was different back then. Today, thanks to where we are and our exposure, a person of colour can have stronger ambition. We have an Indian-origin Prime Minister in the UK now.”

Politically, the tide and shift in the world has been quite dramatic, yet gradual. “It all started in 2008, when Barack Obama became the first Black President of the US. Then the incident of George Floyd in 2020 triggered something deeper. It forced institutions to think about diversity, integration and inclusion in a much deeper way,” he explains.

The early years

In town to attend the programme, ‘India/UK Together Season of Culture’ and meet stakeholders in the cultural world, the 53-year-old former CEO/Director of New Art Exchange, a contemporary arts space in Nottingham, has for long created connections between the UK and overseas and championed the idea of inclusivity. “My team is one of the most diverse. Lived experiences of different cultures provide different solutions and inventive ways of creating a model in a more substantial way,” he says. “The echo chambers locked in their own conversation are unhealthy. It is like incestual reproduction that leads to gene malfunction.”

As Director of Arts, British Council, Hundal, who oversees multiple art forms, including architecture; design; fashion; film; literature; music; theatre; dance and visual arts, hopes to diversify this “pool of thought”.

Hundal defines his time spent in the arts based on the three decades he has devoted to the field. “The decade where I started in the arts is the decade of self-discovery, the next decade was about enabling new discoveries for diverse communities,” he points out. “This decade is about new generation leaders, cultural entrepreneurs and facing the genuine truth of our times – creating the idea of a new belonging. Therefore, it’s important to mingle people from the community with the chattering classes of the art world.”

Incidentally, it was a moment in the Himalayas and a sort of identity crisis that triggered Hundal’s interest in the arts. “I was 21, then. I was in Kasauli – not far from Chandigarh, where my parents are from, when I realised I didn’t want to pursue engineering,” he says. “I attended a recital and it was one of the most extraordinary performances that I witnessed. The raag, the tabla, it was awe-inspiring and I thought to myself that this is what I need more of.”

Renewed and reenergised

Back to the world at sea level, at his campus in Nottingham, Hundal returned with a renewed spirit. “I walked down the hill and saw a red door open. I didn’t know what was going on in the room, so I walked straight into it. There were two men arguing about how to produce photographs and I asked if they had any job for me.”

Hundal ended up volunteering with the Nottingham Arts Mela in 1992. “It was an absolute eye opener, because I was with artists and creative people challenging their own identity and all the racism of the UK at the time. That period set me off working in the arts, an emancipated space. It was an extraordinary range of emotion and self-actualisation,” he says.

Almost 16 years later, Hundal returned as Executive Producer and Co-Artistic Director of the UK’s original South Asian outdoor festival, Nottingham Arts Mela. “I felt I owed the space my time, energy and soul because it had given me the pathway to create an identity.”

In 2019, he was awarded an MBE for his contribution to visual arts. Two years prior to that, he visited India last. “I have a personal link with India – with Punjab; that history, that ancestral gene that is awakening all the time. There’s a fascination with India despite its complexities,” he acknowledges.

Inclusion in Govandi

It’s this complexity Hundal explores when he visits the Govandi Arts Festival on Saturday. Govandi, a suburb in Mumbai, is infamous for its water crisis, where art is not a priority. Hundal argues about the investment of culture in the long-term. “In a space like Govandi, this kind of engagement is a transformative tool. It gives courage to people to say something that would otherwise be pent up. It allows new ways of seeing a space and place.”

It’s about finding that voice. “I am, in fact, learning classical vocals from Ranjana Ghatak, in an attempt to find my own sound; my own voice. Art allows that. I describe ‘art’ as ‘art realising transcendence’”, he reiterates.